h is the haunt of the
hermit thrush. (His nieces and nephews at the old home always speak of
this songster as "Uncle John's bird.")

(Illustration of Mr. Burroughs in the Hay-Barn Study, Woodchuck Lodge.
From a photograph by R. J. H. DeLoach)

As I watched Mr. Burroughs start out morning after morning with his
market-basket of manuscripts on his arm, and briskly walk to his rude
study, I asked myself, "Is there another literary man anywhere, now
that Tolstoy has gone, who is so absolutely simple and unostentatious in
tastes and practice as is John Burroughs?" How he has learned to
strip away the husks and get at the kernels! How superbly he ignores
non-essentials! how free he is from the tyranny of things! There in the
comfort of the hills among which his life began, with his friends around
him, he rejoices in the ever-changing face of Nature, enjoys the fruits
of his garden, his forenoons of work, and the afternoons when friends
from near and far walk across the fields, or drive, or motor up to
Woodchuck Lodge; and best of all, he enjoys the peace that evening
brings--those late afternoon hours when the shadow of Old Clump is
thrown on the broad mountain-slope across the valley, and when the long,
silvery notes of the vesper sparrow chant "Peace, goodwill, and then
good-night." As the shadows deepen, he is wont to carry his Victor
out to the stone wall and let the music from Brahms's "Cradle Song" or
Schubert's "Serenade" float to us as we sit on the veranda, hushed into
humble gratitude for our share in this quiet life.

To see Mr. Burroughs daily amid these scenes; to realize how they are a
part of him, and how inimitably he has transferred them to his books;
to roam over the pastures, follow the spring paths, linger by the stone
walls he helped to build, sit with him on the big rock in the
meadow where as a boy he sat and dreamed; to see him in the everyday
life--hoeing in the garden, tiptoeing about the house preparing
breakfast while his guests are lazily dozing on the veranda; to eat
his corn-cakes, or the rice-flour pudding with its wild strawberry
accompaniment; to see him rocking his grandson in the old blue cradle
in which he himself was rocked; to picnic in the beech woods with him,
climb toward Old Clump at sunset and catch the far-away notes of the
hermit; to loll in the hammocks under the apple trees, or to sit in
the glow of the Franklin stove of a cool September evening while he and
other philosophic