Our Friend John Burroughs

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I read your essay carefully in a few days after receiving it and
laid it aside for a second perusal. Now I despair of finding time
for such a second reading as I designed, and so must write you at
once my impressions after a single reading.

The inference concerning your mind that I draw from your essay
enhances the interest I previously felt in you. All that you tell
me of yourself has the same effect. You certainly have high, very
high, mental power; and the patience and persistency that you must
have shown hitherto assures me that you will in future be equal to
the demands of your intellect. As to publishing what you have now
written, you must judge. The main question, is whether you will
be discouraged by failure of your book. If not, publish, if you
like; and then, if the public ignores your thought, gather up your
strength again and write so that they cannot ignore you. For, in
truth, the public does not like to think; it likes to be amused;
and conceives a sort of hatred against the writer who would force
it to the use of its intellect. This is invariably the case; it
will be so with you. If the public finds anything in your work
that can be condemned, it will be but too happy to pass sentence;
if it can make out to think that you are a pretender, it will
gladly do so; if it can turn its back upon you and ignore you, its
back, and nothing else, you will surely see. And this on account
of your merits. You really have thoughts. You make combinations
of your own. You have freighted your words out of your own mental
experience. You do not flatter any of the sects by using their
cant. Now, then, be sure that you have got to do finished work,
finished in every minutest particular, for years, before your
claims will be allowed.

If you /were/ a pretender, your success in immediate prospect would
be more promising; the very difficulty is that you are not--that
you think--that the public must read you /humbly/, confessing that
you have intelligence beyond its own. I said that the general
public wants to be amused: I now add that it dearly desires to be
flattered, or at least allowed to flatter itself. Those people who
have no thoughts of their own are the very ones who hate mortally
to admit to themselves that any intelligence in the world is superior
to their own. A noble nature is indeed never so delighted as when
it finds something that may be lawfully reverenced; but all the
ignoble keep up their self-complacence by shutting their eyes to
all superiority.

I state the case strongly, as you will feel it bye and bye. Mind,
I am not a disappointed man; and have met as generous appreciation
as I ought to wish. I am not misanthropic, nor in the least
soured. I say all this, not /against/ the public, but /for/ you.

Now, then, as to the essay. It is rich in thought. Everywhere
are the traces of a penetrating and sincere intellect. Much of
the expression is also good. The faults of it, /me judice/, are
as follows: The introduction I think too long. I should nearly
throw away the first five pages. Your true beginning I think to
be near the bottom of the sixth page, though the /island/ in the
middle paragraph of that page is too fine to be lost. From the
sixth to about the twentieth I read with hearty pleasure. Then
begin subordinate essays in illustration of your main theme.
These are good in themselves, but their subordination is a little
obscured. I think careless readers--and most of your readers,
be sure, will be careless--will fail to perceive the connection.
You are younger than I, and will hope more from your readers; but
I find even superior men slow, /slow/, SLOW to understand--missing
your point so often! I think the relationship must be brought
out more strongly, and some very good sentences must be thrown
out because they are more related to the subordinate than the
commanding subject. This is about all that I have to say. Sometimes
your sentences are a little heavy, but you will find, little by
little, happier terms of expression. I do not in the least believe
that you cannot in time write as well as I. What I have done to
earn expression I know better than you The crudities that I have
outgrown or outlabored, I also know.

You must be a little less careless about your spelling, simply
because these slips will discredit your thought in the eyes
of superficial critics.

You understand, of course, that I speak above of the general
public--not of the finer natures, who will welcome you with
warm hands.

I fear that the results of my reading will not correspond to
your wishes, and that it was hardly worth your while to send me
your MS. But I am obliged to you for informing me of your
existence, for I augur good for my country from the discovery
of every such intelligence as yours, and I pledge to you my
warm interest and regard.

Very cordially yours,

David A. Wasson

Worcester, Sept. 29, 1862,

My Dear Mr. Burroughs,--

To the medicine proposition I say. Yes. A man of your tastes
and mental vigor should be able to do some clean work in that
profession. I know not of any other established profession that
allows a larger scope of mind than this. There is some danger of
materialism, but this you have already weaponed yourself against,
and the scientific studies that come in the line of the profession
will furnish material for thought and expression which I am sure
you will know well how to use.

I am glad if my suggestions about your essay proved of some service
to you. There is thought and statement in it which will certainly
one day come to a market. The book, too, all in good season. Life
for you is very long, and you can take your time. Take it by
all means. Give yourself large leisure to do your best. I am
about setting up my household gods in Worcester. This makes me
in much haste, and therefore without another word I must say that
I shall always be glad to hear from you, and that I am always truly
your friend.

D. A. Wasson

Of the early nature papers which Mr. Burroughs wrote for the New
York "Leader," and which were grouped under the general title,
"From the Back Country," there were five or six in number, of
two or three columns each. One on "Butter-Making," of which I
will quote the opening passage, fairly makes the mouth water:--

With green grass comes golden butter. With the bobolinks and the
swallows, with singing groves, and musical winds, with June,--ah,
yes! with tender, succulent, gorgeous June,--all things are blessed.
The dairyman's heart rejoices, and the butter tray with its virgin
treasure becomes a sight to behold. There lie the rich masses, fold
upon fold, leaf upon leaf, fresh, sweet, and odorous, just as the
ladle of the dairymaid dipped it from the churn, sweating great
drops of buttermilk, and looking like some rare and precious ore.
The cool spring water is the only clarifier needed to remove all
dross and impurities and bring out all the virtues and beauties of
this cream-evolved element. How firm and bright it becomes, how
delicious the odor it emits! what vegetarian ever found it in his
heart, or his palate either, to repudiate butter? The essence of
clover and grass and dandelions and beechen woods is here. How
wonderful the chemistry that from elements so common and near at
hand produces a result so beautiful and useful! Eureka! Is not
this the alchemy that turns into gold the commonest substances?
How can transformation be more perfect?

During the years of this early essay-writing, Mr. Burroughs was
teaching country schools in the fall and winter, and working on
the home farm in summer; at the same time he was reading serious
books and preparing himself for whatever was in store for him.
He read medicine for only three months, in the fall of 1862, and
then resumed teaching. His first magazine article about the birds
was written in the summer or fall of 1863, and appeared in the
"Atlantic" in the spring of 1885. He learned from a friend to
whom Mr. Sanborn had written that the article had pleased Emerson.

It was in 1864, while in the Currency Bureau in Washington, that he
wrote the essays which make up his first nature book, "Wake-Robin."
His first book, however, was not a nature book, but was "Walt
Whitman as Poet and Person." It was published in 1867, preceding
"Wake-Robin" by four years. It has long been out of print, and
is less known than his extended, riper work, "Whitman, A. Study,"
written in 1896.

A record of the early writings of Mr. Burroughs would not be
complete without considering also his ventures into the field
of poetry. In the summer of 1860 he wrote and printed his first
verses (with the exception of some still earlier ones written in
1856 to the sweetheart who became his wife), which were addressed
to his friend and comrade E. M. Allen, subsequently the husband of
Elizabeth Akers, the author of "Backward, turn backward, O Time, in
your flight." The lines to E. M. A. were printed in the "Saturday
Press." Because they are the first of our author's verses to appear
in print, I quote them here:--

TO E. M. A.

A change has come over nature
Since you and June were here;
The sun has turned to the southward
Adown the steps of the year.

The grass is ripe in the meadow,
And the mowers swing in rhyme;
The grain so green on the hillside
Is in its golden prime.

No more the breath of the clover
Is borne on every breeze,
No more the eye of the daisy
Is bright on meadow leas.

The bobolink and the swallow
Have left for other clime--
They mind the sun when he beckons
And go with summer's prime.

Buttercups that shone in the meadow
Like rifts of golden snow,
They, too, have melted and vanished
Beneath the summer's glow.

Still at evenfall in the upland
The vesper sparrow sings,
And the brooklet in the pasture
Still waves its glassy rings.

And the lake of fog to the southward
With surges white as snow--
Still at morn away in the distance
I see it ebb and flow.

But a change has come over nature,
The youth of the year has gone;
A grace from the wood has departed,
And a freshness from the dawn.

Another poem, "Loss and Gain," was printed in the New York
"Independent" about the same time.

LOSS AND GAIN

The ship that drops behind the rim
Of sea and sky, so pale and dim,
Still sails the seas
With favored breeze,
Where other waves chant ocean's hymn.

The wave that left this shore so wide,
And led away the ebbing tide,
Is with its host
On fairer coast,
Bedecked and plumed in all its pride.

The grub I found encased in clay
When next I came had slipped away
On golden wing,
With birds that sing,
To mount and soar in sunny day.

No thought or hope can e'er be lost--
The spring will come in spite of frost.
Go crop the branch
Of maple stanch,
The root will gain what you exhaust.

The man is formed as ground he tills--
Decay and death lie 'neath his sills.
The storm that beats,
And solar heats,
Have helped to form whereon he builds.

Successive crops that lived and grew,
And drank the air, the light, the dew,
And then deceased,
His soil increased
In strength, and depth, and richness, too.

From slow decay the ages grow,
From blood and crime the centuries blow,
What disappears
Beneath the years,
Will mount again as grain we sow.

These rather commonplace verses, the first showing his love for
comrades, the others his philosophical bent, were the forerunners
of that poem of Mr. Burroughs's--"Waiting"--which has become a
household treasure, often without the ones who cherish it knowing
its source. "Waiting" was Written in the fall of 1862. In response
to my inquiry as to its genesis, its author said:--

I was reading medicine in the office of a country doctor at the
time and was in a rather gloomy and discouraged state of mind. My
outlook upon life was anything but encouraging. I was poor. I had
no certain means of livelihood. I had married five years before,
and, at a venture, I had turned to medicine as a likely solution
of my life's problems. The Civil War was raging and that, too,
disturbed me. It sounded a call of duty which increased my
perturbations; yet something must have said to me, "Courage!
all will yet be well. You are bound to have your own, whatever
happens." Doubtless this feeling had been nurtured in me by the
brave words of Emerson. At any rate, there in a little dingy back
room of Dr. Hull's office, I paused in my study of anatomy and wrote
"Waiting." I had at that time had some literary correspondence with
David A. Wasson whose essays in the "Atlantic" I had read with
deep interest. I sent him a copy of the poem. He spoke of it as
a vigorous piece of work, but seemed to see no special merit in it.
I then sent it to "Knickerbocker's Magazine," where it was printed,
in December, I think, in 1862. It attracted no attention, and was
almost forgotten by me till many years afterwards when it appeared
in Whittier's "Songs of Three Centuries." This indorsement by
Whittier gave it vogue. It began to be copied by newspapers and
religious Journals, and it has been traveling on the wings of public
print ever since. I do not think it has any great poetic merit.
The secret of its success is its serious religious strain, or what
people interpret as such. It embodies a very comfortable optimistic
philosophy which it chants in a solemn, psalm-like voice. Its
sincerity carries conviction. It voices absolute faith and trust
in what, in the language of our fathers, would be called the ways of
God with man. I have often told persons, when they have questioned
me about the poem, that I came of the Old School Baptist stock,
and that these verses show what form the old Calvinistic doctrine
took in me.

Let me quote here the letter which Mr. Wasson wrote to the author of
"Waiting," on receiving the first autograph copy of it ever written:--

Worcester, Dec. 22,1862.

Mr. Burroughs,--

My Dear Sir,--I beg your pardon a thousand times for having neglected
so long to acknowledge the letter containing your vigorous verses.
Excess of work, and then a dash of illness consequent upon this excess,
must be my excuse--by your kind allowance.

The verses are vigorous and flowing, good in sentiment, and
certainly worthy of being sent to "some paper," if you like to
print them. On the other hand, they do not indicate to me that
you have any special call to write verse. A man of your ability
and fineness of structure must necessarily be enough of a poet not
to fail altogether in use of the poetical form. But all that I
know of you indicates a predominance of reflective intellect--a
habit of mind quite foreign from the lyrical. I think it may be
very good practice to compose in verse, as it exercises you in
terse and rhythmical expression; but I question whether your
vocation lies in that direction.

After all, you must not let anything which I, or any one, may say
stand in your way, if you feel any clear leading of your genius
in a given direction. What I have said is designed to guard you
against an expenditure of power and hope in directions that may
yield you but a partial harvest, when the same ought to be sown on
more fruitful fields. I think you have unusual reflective power;
and I am sure that in time you will find time and occasion for its
exercise, and will accomplish some honorable tasks.

Very truly yours,

D. A. Wasson

It maybe fancy on my part, but I have a feeling that, all
unconsciously to Mr. Burroughs, a sentence or two in Mr. Wasson's
letter of September 29, 1862, had something to do with inspiring
the mood of trustfulness and the attitude of waiting in serenity,
which gave birth to this poem:--

. . . The book, too, all in good season. Life for you is very
long, and you can take your time. Take it by all means. Give
yourself large leisure to do your best.

Whether or not this is so, I am sure the sympathy and understanding
of such a man as Mr. Wasson was a godsend to our struggling writer,
and was one of the most beautiful instances in his life of "his
own" coming to him.

"Waiting" seems to have gone all over the world. It has been
several times set to music, and its authorship has even been
claimed by others. It has been parodied, more's the pity; and
spurious stanzas have occasionally been appended to it; while
an inferior stanza, which the author dropped years ago, is from
time to time resurrected by certain insistent ones. Originally,
it had seven stanzas; the sixth, discarded by its author, ran
as follows:--

You flowret, nodding in the wind,
Is ready plighted to the bee;
And, maiden, why that look unkind?
For, lo! thy lover seeketh thee.

This stanza is a detraction from the poem as we know it, and
assuredly its author has a right to drop it. Concerning the
fifth stanza, Mr. Burroughs says he has never liked it, and has
often substituted one which he wrote a few years ago. The stanza
he would reject is--

The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.

The one he would offer instead--

The law of love binds every heart,
And knits it to its utmost kin,
Nor can our lives flow long apart
From souls our secret souls would win.

And yet he is not satisfied with this; he says it is too subtle and
lacks the large, simple imagery of the original lines.

The legion who cherish this poem in their hearts are justly incensed
whenever they come across a copy of it to which some one, a few
years ago, had the effrontery to add this inane stanza:--

Serene I fold my hands and wait,
Whate'er the storms of life may be,
Faith guides me up to heaven's gate,
And love will bring my own to me.

One of Mr. Burroughs's friends (Joel Benton), himself a poet, in
an article tracing the vicissitudes of this poem, shows pardonable
indignation at the "impudence and hardihood of the unmannered
meddler" who tacked on the "heaven's gate" stanza, and adds:--

The lyric as Burroughs wrote it embodies a motive, or concept, that
has scarcely been surpassed for amenability to poetic treatment, and
for touching and impressive point. Its partly elusive outlines add
to its charm. Its balance between hint and affirmation; its faith
in universal forces, and its tender yet virile expression, are all
shining qualities, apparent to the critical, and hypnotic to the
general, reader. There is nothing in it that need even stop at
"heaven's gate." It permits the deserving reader by happy instinct
to go through that portal--without waiting outside to parade his
sect mark. But the force of the poem and catholicity of its
sanctions are either utterly destroyed or ridiculously enfeebled,
by capping it with a sectarian and narrowly interpreted climax.

Although the poem is so well known, I shall quote it here in the
form preferred by its author;--

WAITING

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid th' eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it hath sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.

The stars come nightly to the sky,
The tidal wave comes to the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.

A Winter Day At Slabsides

"Come and go to Slabsides for over Sunday--I think we can keep warm.
We will have an old-fashioned time; I will roast a duck in the pot;
it will be great fun."

This invitation came from Mr. Burroughs in 1911 to friends who
proposed to call on him early in December. Riverby was closed for
the season, its occupants tarrying in Poughkeepsie, but, ever ready
for an adventure, the Sage of Slabsides proposed a winter picnic at
his cabin in the hills.

A ride of some two hours from New York brings us to West Park,
where our host awaits us. A stranger, glancing at his white
hair and beard, might credit his seventy-five years, but not
when looking at his ruddy face with the keen, bright eyes, or
at his alert, vigorous movements.

Together with blankets and a market-basket of provisions we are
stowed away in a wagon and driven up the steep, winding way; at
first along a country road, then into a wood's road with huge
Silurian rocks cropping out everywhere, showing here and there
seams of quartz and patches of moss and ferns.

"In there," said Mr. Burroughs, pointing to an obscure path, "I had
a partridge for a neighbor. She had a nest there. I went to see
her every day till she became uneasy about it, and let me know I
was no longer welcome."

"Yonder," he continued, indicating a range of wooded hills against
the wintry sky, "is the classic region of 'Popple Town Hill,' and
over there is 'Pang Yang.'"

Some friendly spirit has preceded us to the cabin; a fire is
burning in the great stone fireplace, and mattresses and bedding
are exposed to the heat. Moving these away, the host makes room
for us near the hearth. He piles on the wood, and we are soon
permeated by the warmth of the fire and of the unostentatious
hospitality of Slabsides.

How good it is to be here! The city, with its rush and roar and
complexities, seems far away. How satisfying it is to strip off
the husks and get at the kernel of things! There is more chance
for high thinking when one is big enough to have plain living.
How we surround ourselves with non-essentials, how we are dominated
with the "mania of owning things"--one feels all this afresh in
looking around at this simple, well-built cabin with its few
needful things close at hand, and with life reduced to the simplest
terms. One sees here exemplified the creed Mr. Burroughs outlined
several years ago in his essay "An Outlook upon Life":--

I am bound to praise the simple life, because I have lived it and
found it good. . . . I love a small house, plain clothes, simple
living. Many persons know the luxury of a skin bath--a plunge in
the pool or the wave unhampered by clothing. That is the simple
life--direct and immediate contact with things, life with the
false wrappings torn away--the fine house, the fine equipage,
the expensive habits, all cut off. How free one feels, how good
the elements taste, how close one gets to them, how they fit
one's body and one's soul! To see the fire that warms you, or
better yet, to cut the wood that feeds the fire that warms you;
to see the spring where the water bubbles up that slakes your
thirst, and to dip your pail into it; to see the beams that are
the stay of your four walls, and the timbers that uphold the roof
that shelters you; to be in direct and personal contact with the
sources of your material life; to want no extras, no shields; to
find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water
exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening
saunter; to find a quest of wild berries more satisfying than a gift
of tropic fruit; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated
over a bird's nest, or over a wild flower in spring--these are some
of the rewards of the simple life.

[Illustration: The Living-Room. From a photograph
by M. H. Fanning]

The two men were soon talking companionably. When persons of wide
reading and reflection, and of philosophic bent, who have lived
long and been mellowed by life, come together, the interchange
of thought is bound to be valuable; things are so well said, so
inevitably said, that the listener thinks he cannot forget the
manner of saying; but thoughts crowd thick and fast, comments on
men and measures, on books and events, are numerous and varied,
but hard to recapture. The logs ignite, sending out their cheering
heat, the coals glow, the sparks fly upward, warmth and radiance
envelop us; but an attempt to warm the reader by the glow of that
fireside talk is almost as futile as an effort to dispel to-day's
cold by the fire of yesterday.

A few deserted cottages perched on the rocks near by show us where
the summer neighbors of our host live, but at all seasons his wild
neighbors are the ones he hobnobs with the most; while his indoor
companions are Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve, Carlyle, Arnold, Wordsworth,
Darwin, Huxley, Emerson, Whitman, Bergson, and many others, ancient
and modern.

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