Part 9 (1/2)

J B

Hoell I can see Father's expression as he wrote that line, ”Your dad is honoured in strange lands--more than he is at home”! and I sympathize with hienius are least appreciated in their own hoentleness that he had; feere as easy to get along with He asked little for hienerous to the faults or shortcos of others I remember in one of those early March days the school boys raided his sap pans and Father chased and caught thely, ”I didn't touch your sap, Mr Burris!” and Father laughed over it ”The little rascal was all wet down his front then with sap!” Father would then tell the story of the boy in school as seen by his teacher eating an apple ”I saw you then,” exclaimed the teacher ”Saw me do what?” said the boy ”Saw you bite that apple” ”I didn't bite any apple,” replied the boy ”Come here,” and as the boy ca chunk of apple ”I didn't knoas there,” proh at that: he sy bundle of ”gads” as he called them and he hid them in the stove pipe, where the boys failed to find them I reood nature too far, and then when Father did finally get angry he got furious and grabbed the boy, who hung on his desk, and Father took his Doubtless afterward he was very sorry he had let his teet the better” of him, as he would express it

In those days we often went for a swi pool in Black Creek Father was a good swimmer but he would never dive--he said it always seemed to hi up spears, and one would be impaled upon them if he dived Many times I have askedand active There was so very natural about him, a thin white skin that bled easily at a scratch; fine hair that greell and avy; a fine-grained, fluid kind of body, like the neth of ferns or new shoots of s; ers bent fro when he was a s soft and subdued in colour

Someone once said that his style in literature was slovenly, and Father said that that was true ”I am slovenly in my dress and all I do, so no doubt h this may seem to be a harsh criticism, it is true in the sense that Nature he self is slovenly, slovenly in contrast to what is stiff and artificial His eyes were grayish brown, light, with a hint of green His voice was soft and when he was embarrassed he stammered; he would force the words out, with a little hesitation; then when the word did co-enduring patience, when once it did become exhausted the temper came out in full measure Often he was the one who suffered-- letter he refers to the broken bone in his hand, a long and painful break, that caused hi wood on his wood pile by the study a small stick irritated hied the axe until in fury Father ed to strike it The stick flew back and in sooes to the knuckle of the index finger, which he used in writing

At Home, Feb 12 {1907}

DEAR JULIAN,

Your letter was forwarded ot my teeth Saturday I feel as if I had a tin roof in my mouth, cornice and all I don't kno I can ever endure them, they are horrible

I took your Hobo piece to Dr Barrus and she read it to Miss C and hted with it, even enthusiastic _Forest and Stream_ has returned your piece I enclose their letter I have read the paper

It is not anywhere near as good as your Hobo sketch--has not the sao You can make it better In such an account you o more into detail and be more deeply absorbed yourself

My hand is nearly well Three doctors in M agreed that I had broken a bone Love to you all,

J B

Father always took a azine articles I wrote and though he would never ”correct” a MS he would tell why it was good or bad, and if it was good it gave hireatest pleasure Once when I wrote an article called ”Making Hens Lay” and showed him the cheque I received for it, he exclaih he often said that if he wrote what the editors wanted him to write, very soon they would not hat he did write, he replied tothat Verdi's most popular opera ritten to order, that a siave him a hint from which he wrote one of his best essays The controversy which Father started and which President Roosevelt joined and in which he coined the phrase ”nature fakers” did Father hts and stimulated him in many ways He received many abusive letters, which only amused and entertained hi episode In one of his letters froie dinner I met Thompson Seton He behaved finely and asked to sit next me at dinner He quite wonup the statements made by the ”nature fakers” Father's oer of observation waspay for articles that he wrote on the subject was an added source of fun; it was like spoils captured from the enemy I remember well one day on the Champlain Canal we stopped at noon and Father said hilariously: ”We'll all go to the hotel for dinner We won't bother to cook dinner, we'll let the nature fakers pay for our dinner!” Like everyone else he had his blind side, things he looked at without seeing, things that had no interest or e for him On March 1, 1908, he wrote: ”That slip in the _Outlook_ letter irritatescan drift to ard--things drift to leeward I see how they are laughing at me in the last number”

One first-hand observation Father et The joke was entirely on hi up to Maine on a fishi+ng expedition we had to wait for hours in the woods at a junction While waiting ent down to a fall, where the broaters of a ses of sandstone

In this sandstone orn many pot-holes, some of them perfect, and of all sizes In one about the size of a butter tub was a sucker, aelse to do, Father pulled off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, and getting down on his knees he began to chase this sucker about the pot-hole to catch him The sucker went around and around very deliberately until just the right moment arrived when, with a sudden burst, he threw at least half the water in the pool into Father's face The sucker went doith the er pot-hole below Father was soaked, choked, strangled, and blinded with the water, but when he had shaken himself and blown the water from his mouth and nose and wiped his eyes he said: ”Now if that had been a trout he would have been so rattled that he would have juht out here on the rocks, but you see you can't rattle a sucker!”

There was one subject that Father always took seriously, and that was the question of his diet In his youth he had known nothing of proper diet, and though the wholesome, ho for him, in his earlya whole pie at one sitting,” he said

He loved to recall that when he had the , and when his thirst got to an unbearable point he arose, dressed, cliot soot well at once,” he would add with a laugh I wrote so experiments and I never knehether he was amused or hurt He said rather soberly, the only mention he ever made of them: ”I have a new rule now, so you can add another verse to your poeia, where she and Father were spending the winter, the winter of 1915-16, and in March, 1917, she died here at West Park Father had gone away Though we all knew she could not recover, we all thought she would live until he returned, but she did not, and from Cuba, where the news reached him, he wrote a beautiful tribute Later, after his return, we laid her to rest a her family in the little ceht school so o, and many of his friends I remember that when I told hieneration and the next and into the next, he said, ”How lonely she hs and into his thoughts as he felt hirave As he sat at his desk in the little study, his feet wrapped in an old coat, an open fire snapping in the fireplace, his pen turned reat question Even in 1901 he wrote froail:

I arief, our band of brothers and sisters has not been broken since Wilson died, thirty-seven years ago Which of us will go next? In the autumn weather in the autumn of our days we buried our sister beside her husband