Burroughs has written himself into
his books. We see him doing this in these early years; he was an
earnest student of life at an age when most young men would have
been far less seriously occupied. Difficulties and hardships were
roundabout him, his force was, indeed, "scattered up and down in
the world, in rocks and trees," in birds and flowers, and from
these sources he was even then wresting the beginnings of his
successful career.
It was in November, 1860, when twenty-three years of age, that he
made his first appearance in the pages of the "Atlantic Monthly,"
in the essay "Expression," comments upon which by its author I have
already quoted. At that time he was under the Emersonian spell
of which he speaks in his autobiographical sketch. Other readers
and lovers of Emerson had had similar experiences. Brownlee Brown,
an "Atlantic" contributor (of "Genius" and "The Ideal Tendency,"
especially), was a "sort of refined and spiritualized Emerson,
without the grip and gristle of the master, but very pleasing
and suggestive," Mr. Burroughs says. The younger writer made
a pilgrimage to the home of Brownlee Brown in the fall of 1862,
having been much attracted to him by the above-named essays. He
found him in a field gathering turnips. They had much interesting
talk, and some correspondence thereafter.
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