Just eight I've got
But you know that's not
Enough lacking four,
But to have twelve
It wants no more."
"I have never been able to make out what the third line meant,"
said Mr. Burroughs. A few years later, when Jay Gould was hard
up (he had left school and was making a map of Delaware County),
John Burroughs helped him out by buying two old books of him,
paying him eighty cents. The books were a German grammar and
Gray's "Elements of Geology." The embryo financier was glad to
get the cash, and the embryo writer unquestionably felt the richer
in possessing the books.
Mr. Burroughs loves to look off toward Montgomery Hollow and talk
of the old haunt. "I've taken many a fine string of trout from
that stream," he would say. One day he and his brother Curtis and
I drove over there and fished the stream, and he could hardly stay
in the wagon the last half-mile. "Isn't it time to get out now,
Curtis?" he fidgeted every little while. "Not yet, John,--not
yet," said the more phlegmatic brother. But it was August, and
although the rapid mountain brook seemed just the place for trout,
the trout were not in their places. I shall long remember the
enticing stream, the pretty cascades, the high shelving rocks
sheltering the mossy nest of the phoebe, and the glowing masses of
bee-balm blooming beside the stream; yes, and the eagerness of one
of the fishermen as he slipped along ahead of me, dropping his hook
into the pools.
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