"
But it will not do to carry this analogy too far in writing of Mr.
Burroughs lest it be inferred that I regard the author's work as
having in it something of the uncouth, or the ill-timed, or the
uncultured. His writing is of the earth, but not of the earth
earthy. He sees divine things underfoot as well as overhead.
His page has the fertility of a well-cultivated pastoral region,
the limpidness of a mountain brook, the music of our unstudied
songsters, the elusive charm of the blue beyond the summer clouds;
it has, at times, the ruggedness of a shelving rock, combined with
the grace of its nodding columbines.
Mr. Burroughs has told us, in that June idyl of his, "Strawberries,"
that he was a famous berry-picker when a boy. It was with a
peculiar pleasure that I wandered with him one midsummer day over
the same meadows where he used to gather strawberries. My first
introduction to him as a writer, many years before, had been in
hearing this essay read. And since then never a year passes that
I do not read it at least three times--once in winter just to bring
June and summer near; once in spring when all outdoors gives promise
of the fullness yet to be; and once in the radiant summer weather
when daisies and clover and bobolinks and strawberries riot in
one's blood, making one fairly mad to bury one's self in the June
meadows and breathe the clover-scented air.
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