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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