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Editorial 



John Burroughs. 



In the nation-wide expression of sorrow occasioned by the 

 passing of our great interpreter of the teeming life of woods and 

 fields, little has been said concerning the fact that his life was 

 well-rounded and well finished. We could so illy spare him 

 ■even tho he had attained the age of 84, surely a good old age, 

 that we could not bring ourselves to think of him as other than 

 young and vigorous. He had lived happily doing the work that 

 he loved; he was still keen in interest and young in spirit; and 

 he gave us the secret of his perpetual youth when he wrote: 

 rust, rot and mildew come to unused things' ' . "Oh, the blessedness 

 ■of work, of life-giving and sustaining work! The busy man is 

 the happy man; the idle man is the unhappy." "Oh, the 

 blessedness of motion, of a spur to action, of a current in one's 

 days, of something to stimulate the will, to help reach a decision, 

 to carry down stream the waste and debris of one's Hfe." 



Perhaps no one has summed up the lesson of his life better 

 than he hirr.self when he wrote: "In every man's life we may 

 read some lesson. What may be read in mine? If I myself 

 see corrrectly it is this: that one may have a happy and not 

 altogether useless life on cheap and easy terms; that the essen- 

 tial things are always near at hand; that one's own door opens 

 upon the wealth of heaven and earth; and that all things are 

 ready to serve and cheer one. Life is a struggle, but not a war- 

 fare, it is a day's labor, but labor on God's earth, under the sun 

 and stars with other laborers, where we may think and sing 

 and rejoice as we work." 



255 



