n they were reared; the other,
whose interests in the early years were seemingly just as circumscribed,
but who felt that nameless something--that push from within--which first
found its outlet in a deeper interest in the life about him than his
brothers ever knew; and who later felt the magic of the world of books;
and, still later, the need of expression, an expression which finally
showed itself in a masterly interpretation of country life and
experiences. The same heredity here, the same environment, the same
opportunities--yet how different the result! The farmer has tended and
gathered many a crop from the old place since they were boys, but has
been blind and deaf to all that has there yielded such a harvest to
the other. That other, a plain, unassuming man, "standing at ease
in nature," has become a household word because of all that he has
contributed to our intellectual and emotional life.

A man who as a lad had roamed the Roxbury hills with John Burroughs and
his brothers, and had known the boy John as something of a dreamer,
and thought of him in later years as perhaps of less account than his
brothers (since they had settled down, owned land, and were leading
industrious lives), was traveling in Europe in the eighties. On the
top of a stage-coach in the Scottish Highlands he sat next a
scholarly-looking man whose garb, he thought, betokened a priest. From
some question which the traveler put, the Englishman learned that the
stranger was from America. Immediately he showed a lively interest.
"From America! Do you, then, know John Burroughs?"

Imagine the surprise of the Delaware County farmer at being questioned
about his schoolmate, the dreamer, who, to be sure, "took to books"; but
what was he that this Englishman should inquire about him as the one man
in America he was eager to learn about! Doubtless Mr. Burroughs was
the one literary man the Delaware County farmer did know, though his
knowledge was on the personal and not on the literary side. And imagine
the surprise of the priest (if priest it was) to find that he had
actually lighted upon a schoolmate of the author!--C. B.)

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

I seem to have been a healthy, active child, very impressionable, and
with more interests and a keener enjoyment of things than most farm boys
have. I was fond of the girls back as early as I can remember, and had
my sweethearts at a very early age....

I learned my letters at school, when I was