|i)hn Ikirroughs has written \oluniinous1y, but it is not too much to sav that he 

 has written in all things well. It is for one either in sympathy with or directly 

 antagonistic to Mr. Burroughs' views on certain things, to treat of his philosophi- 

 cal writing. They are commended or condemned according as one agrees or 

 dissents. Mr. Burroughs may perhaps be best described as a fatalist, when it 

 comes to a question of man here and hereafter. He will be known long after he 

 has been given back to Mother Earth, by his books on the brooks, the flowers, and 

 the birds which all readers alike love, rather than by the books which have put 

 the printed page between two hostile camps of thought. 



"Wake Robin" was one of the earliest, perhaps the earliest, of John 

 Burroughs' books. It struck a new chord in the hearts of the people. White of 

 Selborne, England, and Thoreau of Concord, Massachusetts, with a few others, 

 were the only forerunners of Burroughs who knew how to write of Mother 

 Nature in a way to win for her not only the interest but the loving sympathy 

 of the reader. White was an Englishman writing in the eighteenth century. 

 He had few American readers. Thoreau with all his beauty of expression 

 was so much given to wandering into paths where the ordinary reader was lost 

 that he could not attract as did John Burroughs the great following of those who 

 wished to familiarize themselves with the trees of the forest, the beasts of the 

 field, and the fowls of the air. 'T.ocusts and Wild Honey," "Riverby," "Winter 

 Sunshine," "Birds and Poets," "Fresh Fields," "Pepacton." and many other books 

 have come since "Wake Robin," and many of them have more than repeated its 

 success. John Burroughs loves that of which he writes. There is not a bird 

 which in spring or fall, northward or southward flying and m.aking a highway of 

 the Hudson, he does not know as a father knows his favorite child. 

 "He saw the partridge drum in the woods ; 

 He heard the woodcock's evening hymn ; 

 He found the tawny thrush's broods ; 

 And the sky hawk did wait for him." 



John Burroughs' knowledge of the mammals is as intimate as his knowledge 

 of the birds, but the reader always feels after closing one of his books, in which 

 the ways of the beast and the bird and the beauty of the flower are told rarely 

 and truthfully, that the most loving touch was that for the bards whose matin 

 and vesper songs waked the writer's heart to gladness or lulled his mind to rest 

 at the close of the troubling day. 



John Burroughs lives at West Park, N. Y. His country place is called 

 Riverby. It is a large estate with a fine residence building. Over in one secluded 

 corner is a little rough cottage which the owner calls "Slab Sides." Burroughs 

 built it ; and, forsaking early in the spring the great house beyond, he goes to live 

 at Slab Sides, for there during ihe season of the birds John Burroughs can get 

 nearest to the warm heart of Nature. 



Mr. Burroughs has the loves and the svmpathies of the poet ; but if the 

 occasion demands, he can throw poetry to the winds and. to use a somewhat mixed 



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