ar beauty could
not long hold him under its spell.

(Illustration of John Muir and John Burroughs, Pasadena, California.
From a photograph by George R. King)

A veritable homesickness came over him amid unfamiliar scenes. One day
in early March, after journeying all day over the strange region of the
California desert, with its giant cacti, its lava-beds, its volcanic
cones, its rugged, barren mountains, its deep gorges and canons, its
snow-capped peaks, on reaching San Bernardino, so green and fresh and
smiling in the late afternoon sun, and riding through miles and miles
of orange groves to Riverside, this return to a winsome nature (though
unlike his own), after so much of the forbidding aspect had been before
us, was to Mr. Burroughs like water brooks to the thirsty hart.

His abiding love for early friends, too, crops out on all occasions.
Twice while away on this trip be received the proffer of honorary
degrees from two of our American universities. Loath to accept such
honors at any time, he was especially so now, and declined, defending
himself by saying that the acceptance would have necessitated his
hurrying straight home across the States to have the degrees conferred
upon him, when he was planning to tarry in Iowa and see an old
schoolmate.

"I didn't want to do it," he said petulantly; "I wanted to stop and see
Sandy Smith"--his tone being not unlike what he would have used when as
a boy he doubtless coaxed to "go out and play with Sandy."

Mr. Burroughs is too much a follower of the genuinely simple life to be
long contented in hotels, however genial the hospitality. He declared
the elegant suite at the Mission Inn at Riverside, which was tendered
to him and his party in the most cordial, unobtrusive way, was too
luxurious for a "Slabsider" like him. It was positively painful to him
to be asked, as he was frequently on the Western and Hawaiian tour, to
address audiences, or "just to come and meet the students" at various
schools and colleges. Such meetings usually meant being "roped in" to
making a speech, often in spite of assurances to the contrary. I have
known him to slip away from a men's club early in the evening, before
dinner was announced, and return to our little cottage in Pasadena,
where he would munch contentedly an uncooked wafer, drink a cup of hot
water, read a little geology, and go to bed at the seasonable hour of
nine, the next morning awakening with a keen appetite for the new day,