Along the road between the old home and Woodchuck Lodge are some
rocks which were the "giant stairs" of his childhood. On these
he played, and he is fond now of pausing and resting there as he
recalls events of those days.
"Are these rocks very old?" some one asked him one day.
"Oh, yes; they've been here since Adam was a kitten."
Whichever way he turns, memories of early days awaken; as he
himself has somewhere said in print, "there is a deposit of him
all over the landscape where he has lived."
As we have learned, Mr. Burroughs seems to have been more alive
than his brothers and playmates, to have had wider interests and
activities. When, a lad, he saw his first warbler in the "Deacon
Woods," the black-throated blue-back, he was excited and curious as
to what the strange bird could be (so like a visitant from another
clime it seemed); the other boys met his queries with indifference,
but for him it was the event of the day; it was far more, it was
the keynote to all his days; it opened his eyes to the life about
him--here, right in the "Deacon Woods," were such exquisite
creatures! It fired him with a desire to find out about them.
That tiny flitting warbler! How far its little wings have carried
it! What an influence it has had on American literature, and on
the lives of readers for the past fifty years, sending them to
nature, opening their eyes to the beauty that is common and near
at hand! One feels like thanking the Giver of all good that a
little barefoot boy noted the warbler that spring day as it flitted
about in the beeches wood.
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