It is like
a white violet or a hepatica.
But with Mr. Burroughs we feel how preeminently sane and healthy
he is. His essays have the perennial charm of the mountain brooks
that flow down the hills and through the fertile valleys of his
Catskill home. They are redolent of the soil, of leaf mould,
of the good brown earth. His art pierces through our habitual
indifference to Nature and kindles our interest in, not her beauty
alone, but in her rugged, uncouth, and democratic qualities.
Like the true walker that he describes, he himself "is not merely
a spectator of the panorama of nature, but is a participator in it.
He experiences the country he passes through,--tastes it, feels it,
absorbs it." Let us try this writer by his own test. He says:
"When one tries to report nature he has to remember that every
object has a history which involves its surroundings, and that the
depth of the interest which it awakens in us is in the proportion
that its integrity in this respect is preserved." He must, as we
know Mr. Burroughs does, bring home the river and the sky when he
brings home the sparrow that he finds singing at dawn on the alder
bough; must make us see and hear the bird /on the bough/, and this is
worth a whole museum of stuffed and labeled specimens.
Pages:
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267