veritable, indisputable, dynamic gifts," Walt Whitman said familiarly
to a friend in 1888, in commenting on our subject's place in literature.
And of a letter written to him by Mr. Burroughs that same year he said:
"It is a June letter, worthy of June; written in John's best outdoor
mood. Why, it gets into your blood, and makes you feel worth while. I
sit here, helpless as I am, and breathe it in like fresh air."

Minot Savage once asked in a sermon if it did not occur to his hearers
that John Burroughs gets a little more of June than the rest of us do,
and added that Mr. Burroughs had paid years of consecration of thought
and patient study of the lives of birds and flowers, and so had bought
the right to take June and all that it means into his brain and heart
and life; and that if the rest of us wish these joys, we must purchase
them on the same terms. We are often led to ask what month he has not
taken into his heart and life, and given out again in his writings.
Perhaps most of all he has taken April into his heart, as his essay on
it in "Birds and Poets" will show:--

How it (April) touches one and makes him both glad and sad! The voices
of the arriving birds, the migrating fowls, the clouds of pigeons
sweeping across the sky or filling the woods, the elfin horn of the
first honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clear
piping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the camp-fire in
the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, the tinge of
green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls and slopes, the full
translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun,--how these things and
others like them are noted by the eager eye and ear! April is my natal
month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at
each return of it. Its name has an indescribable charm to me. Its two
syllables are like the calls of the first birds,--like that of the
phoebe-bird, or of the meadowlark.

But why continue? The whole essay breathes of swelling buds, springing
grass, calls of birds, April flowers, April odors, and April's uncloying
freshness and charm. As we realize what the returning spring brings to
this writer, we say with Bliss Carman:--

"Make (him) over. Mother April,
When the sap begins to stir."

I fancy there are many of his readers who will echo what one of his
friends has said to him: "For me the 3d of April will ever stand apart
in the calendar with a