The half-wild, adventurous life of the soldier suited him better
than the humdrum of the farm. From him, as I have said, I get the
dash of Celtic blood in my veins--that almost feminine sensibility
and tinge of melancholy that, I think, shows in all my books.
That emotional Celt, ineffectual in some ways, full of longings
and impossible dreams, of quick and noisy anger, temporizing,
revolutionary, mystical, bold in words, timid in action--surely
that man is in me, and surely he comes from my revolutionary
ancestor, Grandfather Kelly.
I think of the Burroughs branch of my ancestry as rather retiring,
peace-loving, solitude-loving men--men not strongly sketched in
on the canvas of life, not self-assertive, never roistering or
uproarious--law-abiding, and church-going. I gather this
impression from many sources, and think it is a correct one.
Oh, the old farm days! how the fragrance of them still lingers
in my heart! the spring with its farm, the returning birds, and
the full, lucid trout-streams; the summer with its wild berries,
its haying, its cool, fragrant woods; the fall with its nuts, its
game, its apple-gathering, its holidays; the winter with its
school, its sport on ice and snow, its apple-bins in the cellar,
its long nights by the fireside, its voice of fox-bounds on the
mountains, its sound of flails in the barn--how much I still dream
about these things!
But I am slow in keeping my promise to try to account for myself.
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