JOHN BURROUGHS 151 



"We have never ceased to wonder that this 

 friend of the birds, this kindly interpreter of na- 

 ture in all her moods, was born and brought up 

 on a farm ; it was in that smiling country watered 

 by the east branch of the Delaware. No man, 

 as a rule, knows less about the colors, songs, and 

 habits of birds, and is more indifferent to natural 

 scenery than the man born to the soil, who delves 

 in it and breathes its odors. Contact with it and 

 laborious days seem to deaden his faculties of ob- 

 servation and deprive him of all sympathy with 

 nature." During the days when the deadening 

 might have occurred, Mr. Burroughs was teaching 

 school. Then he became a United States bank 

 examiner, and only after that returned to the 

 country where he still lives. He is now in his 

 seventies, and coming full of years, and fuller 

 and fuller of books, as his vines are full of years, 

 and fuller and fuller of grapes. 



Could it be otherwise ? If men and grapes 

 are of the same divine dust, should they not 

 grow according to the same divine laws ? Here 

 in the vineyard along the Hudson, Mr. Bur- 

 roughs planted himself in planting his vines, and 

 every trellis that he set has become his own sup- 



