ce in the Treasury in 1873, and was appointed
receiver of a broken national bank. Later, until 1885, his business
occupation was that of a National Bank Examiner. An article contributed
by him to The Century Magazine for March, 1881, on Broken Banks and Lax
Directors, is perhaps the only literary outcome of this occupation, but
the keen powers of observation, trained in the field of nature, could
not fail to disclose themselves in analyzing columns of figures. After
leaving Washington Mr. Burroughs bought a fruit farm at West Park, near
Esopus, on the Hudson, and there building his house from the stones
found in his fields, has given himself the best conditions for that
humanizing of nature which constitutes the charm of his books. He was
married in 1857 to a lady living in the New York village where he was
at the time teaching. He keeps his country home the year round, only
occasionally visiting New York. The cultivation of grapes absorbs the
greater part of his time; but he has by no means given over letters. His
work, which has long found ready acceptance both at home and abroad,
is now passing into that security of fame which comes from its entrance
into the school-life of American children.

Besides his outdoor sketches and the other papers already mentioned,
Mr. Burroughs has written a number of critical essays on life and
literature, published in Indoor Studies, and other volumes. He has also
taken his readers into his confidence in An Egotistical Chapter,
the final one of his Indoor Studies; and in the Introduction to the
Riverside Edition of his writings he has given us further glimpses of
his private intellectual life.

Probably no other American writer has a greater sympathy with, and a
keener enjoyment of, country life in all its phases--farming, camping,
fishing, walking--than has John Burroughs. His books are redolent of the
soil, and have such "freshness and primal sweetness," that we need not
be told that the pleasure he gets from his walks and excursions is by no
means over when he steps inside his doors again. As he tells us on more
than one occasion, he finds he can get much more out of his outdoor
experiences by thinking them over, and writing them out afterwards.

Numbers 28, 36, and 92 of the Riverside Literature Series consist of
selections from Mr. Burroughs's books. No. 28, which is entitled Birds
and Bees, is made up of Bird Enemies and The Tragedies of the Nests from
the volume Signs and Sea