JOHN BURROUGHS 167 



It is not every farmer who should go to writ- 

 ing, nor every writer who should go to farming; 

 but there is a mighty waste of academic literature, 

 of premature, precocious, lily-handed literature, 

 of chicken-licken literature, because the writers 

 do not know a spade when they see one, would 

 not call it a spade if they knew. Those writers 

 need to do less writing and more farming, more 

 real work with their soft hands in partnership 

 with the elemental forces of nature, or in com- 

 radeship with average elemental men — the only 

 species extant of the quality to make writing 

 worth while. 



Mr. Burroughs has had this labor, this partner- 

 ship, this comradeship. His writing is seasoned 

 and sane. It is ripe, and yet as fresh as green 

 corn with the dew in the silk. You have eaten 

 corn on the cob just from the stalk and steamed 

 in its own husk *? Green corn that is corn, that 

 has all its- milk and sugar and flavor, is corn on 

 the cob, and in the husk, — is cob and kernel and 

 husk, — not a stripped ear that is cooked into 

 the kitchen air. 



Literature is too often stripped of its human 

 husk, and cut from its human cob : the man 



