adle," said Mr. Burroughs,
as he indicated the quaint blue wooden cradle (which I had found in
rummaging through the attic at the old home, and had installed in
Woodchuck Lodge), "or minding the baby while Mother bakes or mends
or spins. I hear her singing; I see Father pushing on the work of the
farm."

Most of the soil in Delaware County is decomposed old red sandstone.
Speaking of this soil Mr. Burroughs said, "In the spring when the plough
has turned the turf, I have seen the breasts of these broad hills glow
like the breasts of robins." He is fond of studying the geology of the
region now. I have seen him dig away the earth the better to expose
the old glacier tracings, and then explain to his grandchildren how the
glaciers ages ago made the marks on the rocks. To me one of the finest
passages in his recent book "Time and Change" is one wherein he
describes the look of repose and serenity of his native hills, "as if
the fret and fever of life were long since passed with them." It is
a passage in which he looks at his home hills through the eye of
the geologist, but with the vision of the poet--the inner eye which
assuredly yields him "the bliss of solitude."

One evening as we sat in the kitchen at the old home, he described the
corn-shelling of the olden days: "I see the great splint basket with the
long frying-pan handle thrust through its ears across the top, held
down by two chairs on either end, and two of my brothers sitting in
the chairs and scraping the ears of corn against the iron. I hear the
kernels rattle, a shower of them falling in the basket, with now and
then one flying out in the room. With the cobs that lie in a pile beside
the basket I build houses, carrying them up till they topple, or till
one of the shelters knocks them over. Mother is sitting by, sewing, her
tallow dip hung on the back of a chair. Winter reigns without. How it
all comes up before me!"

He remembers when four or five years old crying over a thing which had
caused him deep chagrin: A larger boy--"the meanest boy I ever knew, and
he became the meanest man," he said with spirit--"found me sulking
under a tree in the corner of the school-yard; he bribed me with a slate
pencil into confessing what I was crying about, but as soon as I had
told him, he ran away with the pencil, shouting my secret to the other
boys."

One day we went 'cross lots after spearmint for jelly for the table at
Woodchuck Lodge, and an abandoned house ne