JOHN BURROUGHS 163 



Careful as Mr. Burroughs has been with his 

 facts, so careful as often to bring us excellent 

 science, he yet has left us no inventory of the 

 out-of-doors. His work is literature ; he is not a 

 demonstrator, but an interpreter, an expositor 

 who is true to the text and true to the whole of 

 the context. 



Our pleasure in Mr. Burroughs as an inter- 

 preter comes as much from his wholesome good 

 sense, from his balance and sanity, I think, as 

 from the assurance of his sincerity. Free from 

 pose and cant and deception, he is free also from 

 bias and strain. There is something ordinary, 

 normal, reasonable, companionable, about him; 

 an even tenor to all his ways, a deliberateness, 

 naturalness to all his paths, as if they might have 

 been made originally by the cows. So they were. 



If Mr. Burroughs were to start from my door 

 for a tramp over these small Hingham hills he 

 would cross the trout-brook by my neighbor's 

 stone bridge, and nibbling a spear of peppermint 

 on the way, would follow the lane and the cow- 

 paths across the pasture. Thoreau would pick 

 out the deepest hole in the brook and try to 

 swim across; he would leap the stone walls of 



