Those writers who are
like still-water fishermen, whose great virtues are patience and a
tireless arm, never appealed to me any more than such fishing ever did.
I want something more like a mountain brook--motion, variety, and the
furthest possible remove from stagnation.

Indeed, where can you find a better symbol of good style in
literature than a mountain brook after it is well launched towards the
lowlands--not too hurried, and not too loitering--limpid, musical, but
not noisy, full but not turbid, sparkling but not frothy, every shallow
quickly compensated for by a deep reach of thought; the calm, lucid
pools of meaning alternating with the passages of rapid description, of
moving eloquence or gay comment--flowing, caressing, battling, as the
need may be, loitering at this point, hurrying at that, drawing together
here, opening out there--freshness, variety, lucidity, power.

(We wish that, like the brook, our self-analyst would "go on forever";
but his stream of thought met some obstacle when he had written thus
far, and I have never been able to induce it to resume its flow. I have,
there-fore, selected a bit of self-analysis from Mr. Burroughs's diary
of December, 1884, with which to close this subject. C.B.)

I have had to accomplish in myself the work of several generations.
None of my ancestors were men or women of culture; they knew nothing of
books. I have had to begin at the stump, and to rise from crude things.
I have felt the disadvantages which I have labored under, as well as the
advantages. The advantages are, that things were not hackneyed with me,
curiosity was not blunted, my faculties were fresh and eager--a kind of
virgin soil that gives whatever charm and spontaneity my books possess,
also whatever of seriousness and religiousness. The disadvantages are an
inaptitude for scholarly things, a want of the steadiness and clearness
of the tone of letters, the need of a great deal of experimenting, a
certain thickness and indistinctness of accent. The farmer and laborer
in me, many generations old, is a little embarrassed in the company of
scholars; has to make a great effort to remember his learned manners and
terms.

The unliterary basis is the best to start from; it is the virgin soil of
the wilderness; but it is a good way to the college and the library,
and much work must be done. I am near to nature and can write upon these
themes with ease and success; this is my proper field, as I well