My Boyhood Part 5

Send me some of the pictures you took at Slabsides of the Suter girls and any others that would interest me.

I go to-day to the Harrimans at Arden for two or three days. On Sat.u.r.day last I had 25 Va.s.sar girls at SS and expect more this Sat.u.r.day. Lown said Black Creek was full of ducks on Sunday--I see but few on the river. Give my love to the Suter girls.... Much fog here lately.

Your affectionate father, J. B.

Ducks in Black Creek--it was tantalizing to read that! It brought back the memories of the days Father and I hunted them there--I shall never forget how impressed he was by one duck, so impressed that he spoke of it at length in an article he wrote--"The Wit of a Duck." He was paddling me up the sun-lit reaches of the Shataca on Black Creek when suddenly two dusky mallards or black ducks tore out of the willow herb and dodder and came like the wind over our heads. I was using a high-powered duck gun, and brought down both ducks, one, however, with a broken wing. The duck came tumbling down and with a fine splash struck the water, where for a moment it shone and glistened in the sun. And that was all, the duck was gone instantly, we never saw it again. What happened of course was that the duck dived, using its other wing and feet, and came up in the brush, where it hid, no doubt with only half an inch of its bill out of water. Its presence of mind, working instantly and without hesitation, caused Father to exclaim in wonder.

Father was never a sportsman in the strict sense--he never had a shotgun that was really good for anything, or any hunting dogs or hunting clothes--a pair of rubber boots used for trout fishing was as far as he got in that direction--unless the soft felt hat, gray, torn, with some flies or hooks stuck in the band, could be counted. He was an expert trout fisherman, but was not averse to using gra.s.shoppers, worms, live bait, or caddis fly larvae. I know we stood one day in the Shataca and Father shot and shot at the black ducks that flew overhead, and he bemoaned his lack of skill in not being able to bring them down. "d.i.c.k Martin would bring those fellows down every time," he would say. As I look back on it with the light of later experience I am sure the ducks were out of range, and the borrowed gun was a weak poor thing, not a duck gun. We built ourselves a bough house out on a little island in the swamp and got in it, crouched down, and soon some ducks came down, down, lowering their feet to drop in the water. "Don't shoot, Poppie, don't shoot!" I exclaimed, and he did not shoot, and to this day he never knew why I gave such bad advice--I was afraid of the noise of the gun! Father thought I wanted him to wait until they were nearer. But the chance never came again and we went home duckless.

In one of his essays Father spoke of a large family as being like a big tree with many branches which, though it was exposed to the perils of the storms and all enemies of trees, had as compensation more of the sun, more places for birds and their nests, more beauty, and so on. I told him that Balzac expressed the same idea in fewer words, and for a moment he looked worried. Balzac said, "Our children are our hostages to Fate." And each way of expressing the similar idea is characteristic of the man. In many ways Father was like a wide-spreading tree--his intense nature was one that caught all the sun and beauty of life, enough and more to compensate for the sorrow and pain he knew. To adventures out-of-doors, the rise of a big trout to his fly, the sudden appearance of some large wild animal, how his whole nature would react! He was well aware of this trait and often spoke of it--in fact, he had no desire to be cold and calculating before either the unusual or beautiful in nature. Something as ill.u.s.trating this trait of his comes vividly to mind: one early March day I was out duck hunting here on the Hudson and Father was watching me from sh.o.r.e with field gla.s.ses. He was sitting in a sunny nook beside the high rocks below the hill. I was out in the drifting ice with my duck boat, which I had painted to resemble a cake of ice, and was very carefully paddling up on a flock of about a hundred Canada geese. When I got almost within range I found my lead in the ice closed and could not get nearer, but that near by there was another lead in the ice that would take me within easy range. To get to this lead I had to back out of the one I was in, rather a ticklish performance when so near the watchful geese. I did it, however, and as I remember I got some geese. But Father on sh.o.r.e could not see the narrow leads in the great fields of ice; he saw only that when near the geese I suddenly began to drift backward, and judging me by himself he said afterward: "I thought when you saw all those geese so near you got so excited you were overcome or something--and were lying there in the bottom of that boat, helpless in the ice!"

The following three letters show how he watched the river for the migrating wild fowl:

Sat.u.r.day,

Riverby, Mch. 26, {1898.}

MY DEAR JULIAN,

Your letter rec'd. I enclose check for $10 as I have no bills by me. You can get it cashed at Houghton, Mifflin Co., No. 4 Park St.--ask for Mr.

Wheeler. Or may be the treasurer of the college will cash it. We are all well and beginning the spring work. Hiram and I are grafting grapes, and the boys are tying up and hauling ashes. The weather is fine and a very early spring is indicated. I have not seen a wild goose and only two or three flocks of ducks. I should like to have been with you at the Sportsman's Fair. If you make those water shoes or foot boats I should advise you to follow copy--make them like those you saw.

Your sentence about the whispering of the ducks' wings, etc., was good.

Ruskin invented that phrase "the pathetic fallacy." You will probably find it in your rhetoric. It was all right as applied to your sentence.

Susie is very quick witted.

The shad men are getting ready. I hope you will go and hear the lectures of the Frenchman Domnic. He is worth listening to. I shall be very glad when the Easter vacation brings you home once more, you are seldom out of my thoughts. I made two gallons of maple syrup. Walt Dumont has an auction this P. M. Nip and I are going.

Your loving father,

JOHN BURROUGHS

Nip was a fox terrier that was for years Father's constant companion, and they had many adventures together.

Riverby, Mch. 8 {1898}

MY DEAR JULIAN,

I wish you were here to enjoy this fine spring morning. It is like April, bright, calm, warm, and dreamy, sparrows singing, robins and blue birds calling, hens cackling, crows cawing, while now and then the ear detects the long drawn plaint of the meadow lark. The ice in the placid river floats languidly by and I dare say your hunting ground is alive with ducks. I am boiling sap on the old stove set up here in the chip yard. I have ten trees tapped and lots of sap. I wish you had some of the syrup. Your mother came back yesterday and she is now busy in the kitchen, good natured as yet, if it only lasts. She has hired a girl who is expected soon. Your letter came yesterday. No doubt you will have fun acting as "supe" with the boys. It will be a novel experience. Tell me all about it. A note from Kennedy says he saw Trowbridge lately and that T is going to ask you out to see him. Go if he asks you, he is an old friend of mine and a fine man. You have read his stories when you were a boy. He has some nice girls. Remember me to him if you go.

I do not see or hear any ducks lately, I think they are slow in coming.

But I must stop. Write soon.

Your loving father,

JOHN BURROUGHS.

When you get time look over my article in the March _Century_, I think the style is pretty good.

West Park Mch. 2 {1898}

MY DEAR BOY,

Your letter came in due course last week and yesterday your mother was up and brought me your last letter to her. It is a great pleasure to know you keep well and in good heart and courage. I see you have pains in your arms which you vainly think the waists of girls would alleviate.

But they would not, they would only increase the pains I have tried it and I know.

It is quite spring like here--blue birds and clear bright days and half bare ground and drying roads and cackling hens. Ice still in the river down to the elbow.

Keep Lent all you can--that is slow up in your meat--not more than once a day at most. Your head will be all the clearer. I am very well since my return and am still writing. This thought came into my head as I lay in bed this morning--You go to college for two things, knowledge and culture. In the technical schools the student gets much knowledge and little culture. The sciences and mathematics give us knowledge, only literature can give us culture. In the best history we get a measure of both, we get facts and are brought in contact with great minds.

Chemistry, physics, geology, etc., are not sources of culture. But Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, etc., are. The discipline of mathematics is not culture in the strict sense; but the discipline that chastens the taste, feeds the imagination, kindles the sympathies, clarifies the reason, stirs the conscience and leads to self-knowledge and self-control, is culture. This we can only get from literature. Work this idea up in one of your themes and show that the highest aim of a university like Harvard should be culture and not knowledge.

Your mother is well and will soon be back. I see no ducks yet. Hiram is still on his hives and the music of his saw and hammer sounds good in my ears. I shall tap a tree to-day.

Your loving father,

J. B.

After I had been settled in Matthews Hall, Cambridge, for a time Father and Mother came to Cambridge to see me. Father said in his inimitable way that he asked Mother if she would go to this place or that, and she said "No" to each; then when he suggested Cambridge she said, "Yes."

When they returned to Riverby, in the still, lonely house, they missed me, and Father wrote of it all:

Slabsides, Oct. 16, 1897.

MY DEAR JULIAN,

... We reached home safely Thursday night after a dusty ride and tiresome. It is very lonesome in the house. I think we both miss you now more than we did before we left home; it is now a certainty that you are fixed there in Harvard and that a wide gulf separates us. But if you will only keep well and prosper in your studies we shall endure the separation cheerfully. Children have but little idea how the hearts of their parents yearn over them. When they grow up and have children of their own, then they understand and sigh, and sigh when it is too late.

If you live to be old you will never forget how your father and mother came to visit you at Harvard and tried so hard to do something for you.

When I was your age and was at school at Ashland, father and mother came one afternoon in a sleigh and spent a couple of hours with me.

They brought me some mince pies and apples. The plain old farmer and his plain old wife, how awkward and curious they looked amid the throng of young people, but how precious the thought and the memory of them is to me! Later in the winter Hiram and Wilson came each in a cutter with a girl and stayed an hour or so.... The world looks lovely but sad, sad.

Write us often.

Your affectionate father, J. B.

"When it is too late"--how he understood, how broad were his sympathies!

What anguish those words must cost all of us at some time! Father understood, I did not--and now it is too late.

West Park, N. Y., Nov. 7, 1897.