ed by acknowledging each phantom as a friendly power--a creature
on whose shoulders he had raised himself to higher and higher levels;
he saw that though the blackness was peopled with uncouth and gigantic
forms, out of all these there at last arose the being Man, who could put
all creatures under his feet.

Along the road between the old home and Woodchuck Lodge are some rocks
which were the "giant stairs" of his childhood. On these he played,
and he is fond now of pausing and resting there as he recalls events of
those days.

"Are these rocks very old?" some one asked him one day.

"Oh, yes; they've been here since Adam was a kitten."

Whichever way he turns, memories of early days awaken; as he himself
has somewhere said in print, "there is a deposit of him all over the
landscape where he has lived."

As we have learned, Mr. Burroughs seems to have been more alive than
his brothers and playmates, to have had wider interests and activities.
When, a lad, he saw his first warbler in the "Deacon Woods," the
black-throated blue-back, he was excited and curious as to what the
strange bird could be (so like a visitant from another clime it seemed);
the other boys met his queries with indifference, but for him it was the
event of the day; it was far more, it was the keynote to all his days;
it opened his eyes to the life about him--here, right in the "Deacon
Woods," were such exquisite creatures! It fired him with a desire to
find out about them. That tiny flitting warbler! How far its little
wings have carried it! What an influence it has had on American
literature, and on the lives of readers for the past fifty years,
sending them to nature, opening their eyes to the beauty that is common
and near at hand! One feels like thanking the Giver of all good that
a little barefoot boy noted the warbler that spring day as it flitted
about in the beeches wood. Life has been sweeter and richer because of
it.

Down the road a piece is the place where this boy made a miniature
sawmill, sawing cucumbers for logs. On this very rock where we sit he
used to catch the flying grasshoppers early of an August morning--"the
big brown fellows that fly like birds"; they would congregate here
during the night to avail themselves of the warmth of the rocks, and
here he would stop on his way from driving the cows to pasture, and
catch them napping.

Yonder in the field by a stone wall, under a maple which is no longer
standing, in his ea