"
[Illustration: Riverby from the Orchard. From a photograph
by Charles S. Olcott]
Before hunting out Mr. Burroughs in his mountain hermitage, let
us glance at his conventional abode, Riverby, at West Park, Ulster
County, New York. This has been his home since 1874. Having chosen
this place by the river, he built his house of stone quarried from
the neighboring hills, and finished it with the native woods; he
planted a vineyard on the sloping hillside, and there he has
successfully combined the business of grape-culture with his
pursuits and achievements as a literary naturalist. More than
half his books have been written since he has dwelt at Riverby,
the earlier ones having appeared when he was a clerk in the Treasury
Department in Washington, an atmosphere supposedly unfriendly to
literary work. It was not until he gave up his work in Washington,
and his later position as bank examiner in the eastern part of New
York State, that he seemed to come into his own. Business life, he
had long known, could never be congenial to him; literary pursuits
alone were insufficient; the long line of yeoman ancestry back of
him cried out for recognition; he felt the need of closer contact
with the soil; of having land to till and cultivate. This need, an
ancestral one, was as imperative as his need of literary expression,
an individual one.
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