And it always stands
the test--the test of being read out in the daisy-flecked meadows
with rollicking bobolinks overhead.
What quality is it, though, that so moves and stirs us when Mr.
Burroughs recounts some of the simple happenings of his youth?
What is it in his recitals that quickens our senses and perceptions
and makes our own youth alive and real? It is paradise regained--the
paradise of one's lost youth. Let this author describe his boyhood
pastures, going 'cross lots to school, or to his favorite spring,
whatsoever it is--is it the path that he took to the little red
schoolhouse in the Catskills? Is it the spring near his father's
sugar bush that we see? No. One is a child again, and in a
different part of the State, with tamer scenery, but scenery
endeared by early associations. The meadow you see is the one
that lies before the house where you were born; you read of the
boy John Burroughs jumping trout streams on his way to school,
but see yourself and your playmates scrambling up a canal bank,
running along the towpath, careful to keep on the land side of the
towline that stretches from mules to boat, lest you be swept into
the green, uninviting waters of the Erie. On you run with slate and
books; you smell the fresh wood as you go through the lumber yard.
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