ing letter
explains itself:--

Your first note concerning my cat and hog story made me as mad as a
hornet, which my reply showed. Your second note has changed me into a
lamb, as nearly as a fellow of seventy-five can become one....

I have read, I think, every book you ever wrote, and do not let any
production of yours escape me; and I have a little pile of framed copies
of your inimitable "My Own" to diffuse among people at Christmas; and
all these your writings make me wonder and shed metaphorical tears to
think that you are such a heretic about reason in animals. But even
Homer nods; and it is said Roosevelt has moments of silence. S. C. B.

The questions his readers propound are sometimes very amusing. A
physician of thirty years' practice asks in all seriousness how often
the lions bring forth their young, and whether it is true that there
is a relation between the years in which they breed and the increased
productivity of human beings. One correspondent begs Mr. Burroughs to
tell him how he and his wife and Theodore Roosevelt fold their hands
(as though the last-named ever folded his), declaring he can read their
characters with surprising accuracy if this information is forthcoming.
In this instance, I think, Mr. Burroughs folded his hands serenely,
leaving his correspondent waiting for the valued data.

The reader will doubtless be interested to see the kind of letter the
children sometimes get from their friend. I am fortunate in having one
written in 1887 to a rhetoric class in Fulton, New York, and one in
1911, written to children in the New York City schools, both of which I
will quote:--

West Park, N. Y., February 21, 1887

My Dear Young Friends,--

Your teacher Miss Lawrence has presumed that I might have something to
say to a class of boys and girls studying rhetoric, and, what is
more, that I might be disposed to say it. What she tells me about your
interest in my own writings certainly interests me and makes me wish I
might speak a helpful word to you. But let me tell you that very little
conscious rhetoric has gone into the composition of those same writings.

Valuable as the study of rhetoric undoubtedly is, it can go but a little
way in making you successful writers. I think I have got more help as an
author from going a-fishing than from any textbook or classbook I ever
looked into. Miss Lawrence will not thank me for encouraging you to play
truant, but if you take Bacon's or Emerso