woods, and somehow I
felt half aggrieved that he did not immediately propose going in quest
of wild honey. Instead he only replied: "I don't know whether there are
bee-trees around here now or not. I used to find a good deal of wild
honey over at a place that I spoke of casually as Mount Hymettus, and
was much surprised later to find they had so put it down on the maps of
this region. Wild honey is delectable, but I pursued that subject till
I sucked it dry. I haven't done much about it these later years." So
we are not to gather wild honey, I find; but what of that?--am I not
actually walking in the woods with John Burroughs?

Up, up we climb, an ascent of about a mile and a quarter from the
railway station. Emerging from the woods, we come rather suddenly upon a
reclaimed rock-girt swamp, the most of which is marked off in long green
lines of celery. This swamp was formerly a lake-bottom; its rich black
soil and three perennial springs near by decided Mr. Burroughs to drain
and reclaim the soil and compel it to yield celery and other garden
produce.

Nestling under gray rocks, on the edge of the celery garden, embowered
in forest trees, is the vine-covered cabin, Slabsides. What a feeling
of peace and aloofness comes over one in looking up at the encircling
hills! The few houses scattered about on other rocks are at a just
comfortable distance to be neighborly, but not too neighborly. Would one
be lonesome here? Aye, lonesome, but--

"Not melancholy,--no, for it is green
And bright and fertile, furnished in itself
With the few needful things that life requires;
In rugged arms how soft it seems to lie,
How tenderly protected!"

Mr. Burroughs has given to those who contemplate building a house some
sound advice in his essay "Roof-Tree." There he has said that a man
makes public proclamation of what are his tastes and his manners, or
his want of them, when he builds his house; that if we can only keep our
pride and vanity in abeyance and forget that all the world is looking
on, we may be reasonably sure of having beautiful houses. Tried by his
own test, he has no reason to be ashamed of his taste or his manners
when Slabsides is critically examined. Blending with its surroundings,
it is coarse, strong, and substantial without; within it is snug and
comfortable; its wide door bespeaks hospitality; its low, broad
roof, protection and shelter; its capacious hearth, chee