He has given us in his limpid prose intimate
glimpses of the hills and streams and pastoral farms of his native
country; has taken us down the Pepacton, the stream of his boyhood;
we have traversed with him the "Heart of the Southern Catskills,"
and the valleys of the Neversink and the Beaverkill; we have sat
upon the banks of the Potomac, and sailed down the Saguenay; we
have had a glimpse of the Blue Grass region, and "A Taste of Maine
Birch" (true, Thoreau gave us this, also, and other "Excursions"
as well); we have walked with him the lanes of "Mellow England";
journeyed "In the Carlyle Country"; marveled at the azure glaciers
of Alaska; wandered in the perpetual summerland of Jamaica; camped
with him and the Strenuous One in the Yellowstone; looked in awe and
wonder at that "Divine Abyss," the Grand Canon of the Colorado; felt
the "Spell of Yosemite," and idled with him under the sun-steeped
skies of Hawaii and by her morning-glory seas.
Our essayist is thus seen not to be untraveled, yet he is no
wanderer. No man ever had the home feeling stronger than has
he; none is more completely under the spell of a dear and familiar
locality. Somewhere he has said: "Let a man stick his staff into
the ground anywhere and say, 'This is home,' and describe things
from that point of view, or as they stand related to that spot,--the
weather, the fauna, the flora,--and his account shall have an
interest to us it could not have if not thus located and defined.
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