John Burroughs talks, his reminiscences and comments
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| John Burroughs talks, his reminiscences |
About 1882 I began to read the nature essays of John Burroughs as they appeared from month to month in the magazines, and I was charmed at once with their portrayal of bird life, their enthusiasm over the world out-of-doors, and the personality of the writer which his pages revealed. How wholesome it all was! For years I was one of the author's many worshipers from afar, with no thought of ever meeting him; and then chance brought us together.
I had no special knowledge of birds, but I dealt with outdoor themes in my own books, and I was a countryman and something of a dirt farmer, just as he was. We had both travelled in the British Isles and in France, and I was more or less intimately acquainted with various persons in whom he was interested. We continued to see each other rather frequently, and I illustrated two collections of his essays, and he was the subject of some writing I did for periodicals. Never was there a better host, and if I made any untoward interruption in the tenor of his day-to-day routine he did not allow me to be aware of it.
In conversation, his originality, his lively interest in many things, and the wit and wisdom of his comments were unequalled in my experience. From the first, I kept a pretty full record of what he said — much of it taken down in notes while he spoke. My notes were made in long hand, and I seldom caught complete sentences, but I put down enough to retain the words and phrases that were peculiarly his own, and the greater portion of this book is an attempt, based chiefly on the notes I gathered, to give a faithful report of Mr. Burroughs's unconventional talk.
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