I am as fond of going forth for berries as my mother was, even to
this day. Every June I must still make one or two excursions to
distant fields for wild strawberries, or along the borders of the
woods for black raspberries, and I never go without thinking of
Mother. You could not see all that I bring home with me in my
pail on such occasions; if you could, you would see the traces
of daisies and buttercups and bobolinks, and the blue skies, with
thoughts of Mother and the Old Home, that date from my youth. I
usually eat some of the berries in bread and milk, as I was wont to
do in the old days, and am, for the moment, as near a boy again as
it is possible for me to be.
[Illustration: One of Mr. Burroughs's Favorite Seats, Roxbury,
New York. From a photograph by Clifton Johnson]
No doubt my life as a farm boy has had much to do with my
subsequent love of nature, and my feeling of kinship with all
rural things. I feel at home with them; they are bone of my bone
and flesh of my flesh. It seems to me a man who was not born and
reared in the country can hardly get Nature into his blood, and
establish such intimate and affectionate relations with her, as
can the born countryman. We are so susceptible and so plastic in
youth; we take things so seriously; they enter into and color and
feed the very currents of our being.
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