of the most unaffected, natural, sincere men I have ever met. A 
man to whom the song of a thrush made a full and happy birth- 
day'. His life was marked by great simplicity. Much of his 
writing was done on an improvised desk made of boxes and a 
chair of the same crude ty r pe. Thus provided, he sat in the 
doorway' of his ancestral hay r barn at Woodchuck Lodge in the 
Catskills, dreaming and writing away the long summer days. 
From his rustic writing seat, he looked across a little pastoral 
mountain valley. Around him the birds sang, the chipmunks 
gamboled and the woodchucks whistled. 
In his little, plain study at West Park the fireplace mantel 
had a picture of Walt Whitman on one side, and a print of Mona 
Lisa on the other. I often wondered what brought these two 
together in John Burrough’s mind, but he was gone before I had 
asked him. 
His “ Slabsides ” study was also rustic and simple. And his 
desire for a simple life and surroundings was an integral part of 
him— no pose, no fad, no fancy'. In the midst of famous men 
and women, he, their undoubted peer, was the least conspicuous, 
and at eighty'-three, his last birthday', he was as young in mind 
as a y'outh. He loved men and women for themselves. Wealth 
and worldly position meant nothing to him in his friendships. 
And he died as he lived— no ostentation, no pomp and ceremony 
— no reading of letters from foreign academies and foreign am- 
bassadors. Just a grave on his beloved mountain side, and a 
few friends and neighbours. 
“ In every man’s life we may' read some lesson. What may' 
be read in mine? If I myself see correctly, it is this: that one 
may have a happy and not altogether useless life on cheap and 
easy terms; that the essential 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.” — “The 
Summit of the Years.” 
I have tried, gentle reader, to picture him to y r ou as he 
appeared to me. 
Orland E. White. 
