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als where he buries potatoes and onions. "The baking of an onion," he declares, "takes all the conceit out of him. He is sweet and humble after his baptism of fire." Then the talk soars above ducks and onions, until he gives one of the idlers permission to prepare the salad and lay the table. For a dinner to remember all one's days, commend me to a thoroughly relented duck; a mealy, ash-baked potato; an onion (yea, several of them) devoid of conceit, and well buttered and salted; and a salad of Slabsides celery and lettuce; with Riverby apples and pears, and beechnuts to complete the feast--beechnuts gathered in October up in the Catskills, gathered one by one as the chipmunk gathers them, by the "Laird of Woodchuck Lodge," as he is called on his native heath, though he is one and the same with the master of Slabsides. We hear no sounds all the day outside the cabin but the merry calls of chickadees, until in mid-afternoon an unwelcome "Halloa!" tells us the wagon is come to take us down to Riverby. Reluctantly the fire is extinguished, and the wide, hospitable door of Slabsides closes behind us. Riverby, "the house that Jack built," as the builder boasted, is a house interesting and individual, though conforming somewhat to the conventions of the time when it was built (1874). It is as immaculate within as its presiding genius can make it, presenting a sharp contrast to the easy-going housekeeping of the mountain cabin. We tarry a few minutes in the little bark-covered study, detached from the house and overlooking the Hudson, where Mr. Burroughs does his writing when at home; we see the rustic summer-house near by, and the Riverby vineyards, formerly husbanded by "the Vine-Dresser of Esopus," as his friends used to call him; now by his son Julian, who combines, like his father before him, grape-growing with essay-writing. A pleasant hour is spent in the artistic little cottage, planned and built by the author and his son, where live Mr. Julian Burroughs and his family. Here the grandfather has many a frolic with his three grandchildren, who know him as "Baba." John Burroughs the younger is his special pride. Who knows but the naturalist stands somewhat in awe of his grandson?--for as the youngster reaches for his "Teddy," and says sententiously, "Bear!" the elder never ventures a word about the dangers of "sham natural history." Boarding the West Shore train, laden with fruit and beechnuts and pleasant
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