On the top of a stage-coach in the Scottish Highlands he sat next a
scholarly-looking man whose garb, he thought, betokened a priest.
From some question which the traveler put, the Englishman learned
that the stranger was from America. Immediately he showed a lively
interest. "From America! Do you, then, know John Burroughs?"
Imagine the surprise of the Delaware County farmer at being
questioned about his schoolmate, the dreamer, who, to be sure,
"took to books"; but what was he that this Englishman should
inquire about him as the one man in America he was eager to learn
about! Doubtless Mr. Burroughs was the one literary man the
Delaware County farmer did know, though his knowledge was on the
personal and not on the literary side. And imagine the surprise of
the priest (if priest it was) to find that he had actually lighted
upon a schoolmate of the author!--C. B.]
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
I seem to have been a healthy, active child, very impressionable,
and with more interests and a keener enjoyment of things than most
farm boys have. I was fond of the girls back as early as I can
remember, and had my sweethearts at a very early age. . . .
I learned my letters at school, when I was five or six, in the
old-fashioned way by being called up to the teacher several times
a day and naming the letters as he pointed at them where they stood
in a perpendicular column in Cobb's Spelling-Book.
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