Part 4 (1/2)

In winter there were no grapes or berries and for a time Father went on some lecture trips, but only for a time, for he was too nervous, too easily e It took toounpleasant happened, and for a long tiive a formal lecture, if he ever did make a formal address

He told one of his audiences that E e do not like to do, and everyone laughed, for it was exactly the way Father felt about his lecturing Nevertheless, he seeood ti letter, written when away lecturing, will show:

Cae, Mass, Feb 6, '96

MY DEAR JULIAN,

Things have gone very ith ht at 9:05 I went to the Adaht Monday at 3 P M I went out to Lowell and spoke before the wo very well One of them took me home to dinner I caht I went hoht Wednesday I cae to the house of Mrs Ole Bull, who had sentfuriously all day To-night I aht before the Metaphysical Society Ito his place on Saturday and may stay over Sunday or I may come home on the 5:04 train Sunday I saw soht I hope you and your mother keep well and live in peace and quiet Love to you both

Your affectionate father, JOHN BURROUGHS

One of the eneht in the vineyard was the rot, the black rot, an irape that for a few years swept everything Then spraying with the Bordeaux mixture of liether--but it was the early sprayings that counted One year I relected this, in his easy, opti was in vain, and I know that I took hi letter speaks of this and ofwe did not consider until the last ht of it:

Lee, Mass, July 21 {1897}

DEAR JULIAN,

I rec'd your letter this o back hoaras quite badly, and the rain and heat continue Mr Taylor is dead and buried He died the day I left (Friday) Rod he can for you He says if you want to ht to put your name down at once

There is a special Harvard student here, a Mr Hick Mr Gilder's children I like him very e and a fine fellow--froe Owen is in love with Yale and wants you to coot on the Yale ”Lit” He is vastly iether yesterday Rodman I think will be a journalist He is already one of the editors of a Harvard paper--”The Crimson” I think

The country here is much like the Delaware below Hobart I shall stop at Salisbury to visit Miss Warner and then home Friday or Saturday I rite to my publishers to send you Hill's Rhetoric I think you better come home early next week and stop withfather,

JOHN BURROUGHS

If the grapes fail ill try to raise the money for your Harvard expenses At the end of 1898, I expect to get much more money from my books--at least 1,500 a year

This last was in pencil, a postscript Evidently Father had the grape rot in mind, but at this date, July 21st, the die was cast; there was nothing one could do then If they had been properly sprayed in May and June one could laugh at the black rot, but very likely Father had not attended to it; that is, he had made the hired man spray He had other fish to fry, as he often said To me the marvel of it all is that he had so many irons in the fire and was always able to write The different properties that Father accuh to take all his time were it not for his happy nature and wonderful faculty of being able to put theed his elbow

First he had the place here, Riverby, to which he added another nine acres later, clearing and ditching it all and getting it all out in the best grapes, the ones that aras, Wordens, and Moore's Early There were other kinds tried, the once famous Gaertner, Moore's Diamond, the Green Mountain or Winchell, and so on And currants, too, acres of therapes, and Bartlett pears, and peaches As I write, a picture coh step-ladder, picking peaches, and of so and the girls exclai the joke and picking out soft peaches for the handsoreen leaves appealed to him, and as he said, ”When I come to one too soft to shi+p I can eat it” I so vividly re the filled baskets to the dock where they were shi+pped to town and Father being ahead with a basket on his shoulder and of his stu over the steep ledge of rocks, the basket bursting in its fall and the peaches going far and wide over the rocks below We gathered up the peaches, and Father was not hurt, though he fell so close to the top of the steep ledge that his head and shoulder hung over and his face got red in his struggle to hold hiht the land and built Slabsides, clearing up the three acres of celery swamp; and for a while he spent much time there ”Wild Life About My Cabin” was one of the nature essays written of Slabsides The cabin was covered with slabs, and Father wanted to give it a name that would stick, he said, one that would be easily associated with the place, and he certainly succeeded, for everyone knows of Slabsides Uncle Hiram, Father's oldest brother, spent much time with him there, the two brothers, worlds apart in their s together, Father reading the best philosophy or essays, Uncle Hira his dreaazine Soon he would be asleep in his chair, and before the low-burning open fire Father would be drea to the few night sounds of the woods Father tried hard to ave hi and sympathized with him fully and understood his hope that ”next year” the bees would pay and return all

So copperhead, one of the meanest of all poisonous snakes, and one which is quite rare here, fortunately, and for a tirew tired of it, but he had not the heart to kill it, his prisoner ”After keeping a thing shut up and watching it every day I can't go out and kill it in cold blood,” he said in half apology for his act He told the man orked on the swa the rocks and let hiht, proht and the snake, though innocent himself, had to suffer

It was about two h the woods, and so off with his market basket on his ar our I'll admit he did often raid Mother's pantry, and he was not averse to taking pie and cake In fact, he was brought up on cake largely, and always ate of it freely until these last years ”His folks,” as Mother would say, always had at least three kinds of cake three ti to bed At Slabsideswas done over the open fire--potatoes and onions baked in the ashes, laarden--how Father did enjoy it all--the sweetness of things! He would hum:

”He lived all alone, close to the bone Where the meat is sweetest, he constantly eatest,”

and he liked to think of this old rhy to himself

The interior of Slabsides was finished in birch and beech poles, with the bark on them, and much of the furniture he made of natural crooks and crotches He always had his ”eye peeled,” as he said, for some natural piece of wood that he could use The bittersweet has a way of winding itself about sorow it puts a h it were twisted One such piece, a small hemlock, is over the fireplace, and Father would tell how he told the girls who visited Slabsides that he and the hired man twisted this stick by hand ”We told theh, as he told the story, ”and twisted it as you see it, then fastened it and it dried or seasoned that way--and they believed it!” and he would chuckle over it htily

In 1913, Father was able, with the help of a friend, to buy the old homestead at Roxbury, and then he developed one of the faro by his brother Curtis, and thus made the third landh to occupy the tie, and the last years of his life were spent largely there, going out in June and returning in October