In this instance,
I think, Mr. Burroughs folded his hands serenely, leaving his
correspondent waiting for the valued data.
The reader will doubtless be interested to see the kind of letter
the children sometimes get from their friend. I am fortunate in
having one written in 1887 to a rhetoric class in Fulton, New York,
and one in 1911, written to children in the New York City schools,
both of which I will quote:--
West Park, N. Y., February 21, 1887
My Dear Young Friends,--
Your teacher Miss Lawrence has presumed that I might have something
to say to a class of boys and girls studying rhetoric, and, what is
more, that I might be disposed to say it. What she tells me about
your interest in my own writings certainly interests me and makes me
wish I might speak a helpful word to you. But let me tell you that
very little conscious rhetoric has gone into the composition of those
same writings.
Valuable as the study of rhetoric undoubtedly is, it can go but a
little way in making you successful writers. I think I have got
more help as an author from going a-fishing than from any textbook
or classbook I ever looked into. Miss Lawrence will not thank me for
encouraging you to play truant, but if you take Bacon's or Emerson's
or Arnold's or Cowley's essays with you and dip into them now and
then while you are waiting for the fish to bite, she will detect
some fresh gleam in your composition when next you hand one in.
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