happy life. I have gathered my grapes with the bloom upon
them. May you all do the same.

With all good wishes, John Burroughs

"I have no genius for making gifts," Mr. Burroughs once said to me,
but how his works belie his words! In these letters, and in many others
which his unknown friends have received from him, are gifts of rare
worth, while his life itself has been a benefaction to us all.

One day in recounting some of the propitious things which have come to
him all unsought, he said: "How fortunate I have always been! My name
should have been 'Felix.'" But since "John" means "the gracious gift of
God," we are content that he was named John Burroughs.

THE RETREAT OF A POET-NATURALIST

We are coming more and more to like the savor of the wild and the
unconventional. Perhaps it is just this savor or suggestion of free
fields and woods, both in his life and in his books, that causes so many
persons to seek out John Burroughs in his retreat among the trees and
rocks on the hills that skirt the western bank of the Hudson. To Mr.
Burroughs more perhaps than to any other living American might be
applied these words in Genesis: "See, the smell of my son is as the
smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed"--so redolent of the soil
and of the hardiness and plenitude of rural things is the influence that
emanates from him. His works are as the raiment of the man, and to them
adheres something as racy and wholesome as is yielded by the fertile
soil.

We are prone to associate the names of our three most prominent literary
naturalists,--Gilbert White, of England, and Thoreau and John Burroughs,
of America,--men who have been so _en rapport_ with nature that, while
ostensibly only disclosing the charms of their mistress, they have at
the same time subtly communicated much of their own wide knowledge of
nature, and permanently enriched our literature as well.

In thinking of Gilbert White one invariably thinks also of Selborne,
his open-air parish; in thinking of Thoreau one as naturally recalls
his humble shelter on the banks of Walden Pond; and it is coming to pass
that in thinking of John Burroughs one thinks likewise of his hidden
farm high on the wooded hills that overlook the Hudson, nearly opposite
Poughkeepsie. It is there that he has built himself a picturesque
retreat, a rustic house named Slabsides. I find that, to many, the word
"Slabsides" gives the impression of a dilapidated, ramshackle kin