.. planted himself in the fields, builded himself in the stone
walls, and evoked the sympathy of the hills in his struggle."
From a hilltop he pointed off to the west and said, "Yonder is the
direction that my grandparents came, in the 1790's, from Stamford,
cutting a road through the woods, and there, over Batavia Hill,
Father rode when he went courting Mother."
Then we went up the tansy-bordered road, past the little graveyard,
and over to the site where his grandfather's first house stood.
As we wandered about the old stone foundations, his reminiscences
were interrupted by the discovery of a junco's nest. On the way
back he pointed across the wide valley to the West Settlement
schoolhouse where he and his brothers used to go, although his
first school was in a little stone building which is still standing
on the outskirts of Roxbury, and known thereabouts as "the old stone
jug." Mr. Burroughs remembers his first day in this school, and the
little suit he wore, of bluish striped cotton, with epaulets on
the shoulders which flopped when he ran. He fell asleep one day
and tumbled off the seat, cutting his head; he was carried to a
neighboring farmhouse, and he still vividly recalls the smell of
camphor which pervaded the room when he regained consciousness.
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