BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



Still, he has been abroad twice and has 

 recently made a trip to Alaska. Lesser 

 excursions have taken him to Virginia and 

 Kentucky, and to Canada, and he has 

 camped in Maine and the Adirondacks. 

 But the district that he knows best and 

 that he puts oftenest into his nature stud- 

 ies is his home country in the Catskills 

 and the region about his "Riverby" farm. 

 Very little of his writing, however, has been 

 done in the house in which he lives. This 

 was never a wholly satisfactory working- 

 place. He felt he must get away from all 

 conventionalities, and he early put up on 

 the outskirts of his vineyards a little bark- 

 covered study, to which it has been his 

 habit to retire for his indoor thinking and 

 writing. He still uses this study more or 

 less, and often in the summer evenings sits 

 in an easy-chair, under an apple-tree just 

 outside the door, and listens to the voices 

 of Nature while he looks off across the 

 Hudson. 



But the spot that at present most en- 

 gages his affection is a reclaimed woodland 

 swamp, back among some rocky hills, a 

 mile or two from the river. A few years 

 ago the swamp was a wild tangle of brush 



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