atches of milk-white foam--a stream of hurrying amber, thirty
feet wide, risen far back in the hills and woods, now rushing with
volume--every hundred rods a fall, and sometimes three or four in that
distance. A primitive forest, druidical, solitary, and savage--not
ten visitors a year--broken rocks everywhere, shade overhead, thick
underfoot with leaves--a just palpable wild and delicate aroma.

"Not ten visitors a year" may have been true when Whitman described the
place, but we know it is different now. Troops of Vassar girls come
to visit the hermit of Slabsides, and are taken to these falls;
nature-lovers, and those who only think themselves nature-lovers, come
from far and near; Burroughs clubs, boys' schools, girls' schools,
pedestrians, cyclists, artists, authors, reporters, poets,--young and
old, renowned and obscure,--from April till November seek out this lover
of nature, who is a lover of human nature as well, who gives himself and
his time generously to those who find him. When the friends of Socrates
asked him where they should bury him, he said: "You may bury me if you
can _find_ me." Not all who seek John Burroughs really find him; he does
not mix well with every newcomer; one must either have something of Mr.
Burroughs's own cast of mind, or else be of a temperament capable of
genuine sympathy with him, in order to find the real man. He withdraws
into his shell before persons of uncongenial temperament; to such he can
never really speak--they see Slabsides, but they don't see Burroughs. He
is, however, never curt or discourteous to any one. Unlike Thoreau, who
"put the whole of nature between himself and his fellows," Mr. Burroughs
leads his fellows to nature, although it is sometimes, doubtless, with
the feeling that one can lead a horse to water, but can't make him
drink; for of all the sightseers that journey to Slabsides there must of
necessity be many that "Oh!" and "Ah!" a good deal, but never really get
further in their study of nature than that. Still, it can scarcely fail
to be salutary even to these to get away from the noise and the strife
in city and town, and see how sane, simple, and wholesome life is when
lived in a sane and simple and wholesome way. Somehow it helps one
to get a clearer sense of the relative value of things, it makes
one ashamed of his petty pottering over trifles, to witness this
exemplification of the plain living and high thinking which so many
preach about, and so f