t fail to
make a bad use of us. The miser does not use his money, so his money
uses him; men do not govern their ambition, and so are governed by
it....

These considerations are valuable chiefly for their analogical
import. They indicate a larger truth. Man grows by conquering his
limitations--by subduing new territory and occupying it. He commences
life on a very small capital; his force yet lies outside of him,
scattered up and down in the world like his wealth--in rocks, in trees,
in storms and flood, in dangers, in difficulties, in hardships,--in
short, in whatever opposes his progress and puts on a threatening front.
The first difficulty overcome, the first victory gained, is so much
added to his side of the scale--so much reinforcement of pure power.

I have said elsewhere that Mr. Burroughs has written himself into his
books. We see him doing this in these early years; he was an earnest
student of life at an age when most young men would have been far less
seriously occupied. Difficulties and hardships were roundabout him, his
force was, indeed, "scattered up and down in the world, in rocks and
trees," in birds and flowers, and from these sources he was even then
wresting the beginnings of his successful career.

It was in November, 1860, when twenty-three years of age, that he made
his first appearance in the pages of the "Atlantic Monthly," in the
essay "Expression," comments upon which by its author I have already
quoted. At that time he was under the Emersonian spell of which he
speaks in his autobiographical sketch. Other readers and lovers of
Emerson had had similar experiences. Brownlee Brown, an "Atlantic"
contributor (of "Genius" and "The Ideal Tendency," especially), was a
"sort of refined and spiritualized Emerson, without the grip and gristle
of the master, but very pleasing and suggestive," Mr. Burroughs says.
The younger writer made a pilgrimage to the home of Brownlee Brown in
the fall of 1862, having been much attracted to him by the above-named
essays. He found him in a field gathering turnips. They had much
interesting talk, and some correspondence thereafter. Mr. Brown admitted
that his mind had been fertilized by the Emersonian pollen, and declared
he could write in no other way.

Concerning his own imitation of Emerson, Mr. Burroughs says:--

It was by no means a conscious imitation. Had I tried to imitate him,
probably the spurious character of my essay would have deceived no
one.