a sight in a hollow of the mountain-side, while only a few steps above one can enjoy a most gorgeous view of the surrounding country. Did he make the selection because the place was more sheltered? No, I believe he chose the place intuitively, because it expressed his particular point of view of life. The keen breeze and the wide view serve only for occasional inspiration; but the undergrowth vegetation, the crust of soil, the hum of insects, the little flowers -these are the true stimulants of his eloquent simplicity of style.

Burroughs professed to have a great admiration for Turguenieff's "Diary of a Sportsman." These exquisite prose poems represent nature at its best, but they are purely poetic, pictorial, with a big cosmic swing to them. This was out

of the reach of Burroughs, and he never attempted it. His poems contain, as he claims himself, more science and observation than poetry. A few beautiful lines everybody can learn to write, and unless they are fragments of a torso of the most intricate and beautiful construction, they will drop like the slanting rain into the dark wastes of oblivion.

His lessons of nature, accepted as textbooks in the public schools, have a true message to convey. They represent the socialization of science. He loved the birds and learned their ways; he could run his course aright, as he has placed his goal rightly. He stirred the earth about the roots of his knowledge deeply, and thereby entered a new field of thought. He became interested in final causes, design in nature.

The transcendentalist of the Emersonian period at last came to his own. There is something of the bigness of Thoreau in his recent writings, Thoreau who in his "Concord and Merrimac River" had a mystical vision, a grip on religious thought, and who, like a craftsman in cloisonné, hammered his philosophic speculations upon the frugal shapes of his observations. In "Ways of Nature" and "Leaf and Tendril" Burroughs has reached out as far as it is possible for a nature writer without becoming a philosopher. He now no longer contemplates the outward appearance of things, but their organic structure, the geological formation of the earth's crust, and the evolution of life. And some ledge of rock will now give him the prophetic gaze into the past and into the future.

And so John Burroughs at eighty-five, still chopping the wood for his own fireside, writing, lecturing, giving advice about phases of farm-work, strolling over the ground, still interested in literature, can serenely fold his hands and wait.

Indeed, this white-bearded man, in his bark-covered study amidst veiled heights and blurred river scenes, furnishes a wonderful intimate picture, which will linger in American literature and all minds who yearn for a more intimate knowledge of nature, unaffectedly told, like the song of the robin of his first love, "a harbinger of spring thoughts carrying with it the fragrance of the first flowers and the improving verdure of the fields."

ON THE DIFFICULTIES OF WALKING

HEN I speak of the difficulties of walking, I do not refer to the infirmities of age, to flat feet, or to avoirdupois. Not at all. I mean that it is hard indeed in these rushing times to go afoot, even on the most distant by-roads, without being considered eccentric. People stare at you as though you were some kind of freak or criminal. They cast suspicious glances your way, never dreaming that perhaps you prefer your own feet as a means of pleasant locomotion.

I asked a certain friend if he would not accompany me on my weekly jaunts down Long Island. I could not arrange to go for one lengthy stay, and neither could he, I knew; so I thought the next best thing was to do it by piecemeal rather than not at all, and I planned to save time by walking a certain distance, following a road map, return by train on Monday mornings, and then take a train out again to the spot where I had left off the previous week. That seemed That seemed

practical, novel, yet simple and well worth while. To live with a Blue Bird at one's door, and never know it, seems to me, as it seemed to Maeterlinck, the height of folly. I would discover the Blue Bird that was so happily mine, and hear its song on rosy summer mornings, three and even four days at a time, or perish in the attempt.

Well, my friend turned to me and instantly said:

"My car is out of order."

"But I did not mean to go in a car," I as quickly answered.

"Why," he replied, looking at me as though I had gone quite mad, "how else would we go?"

"On foot," I bravely made answer, yet realizing that this confirmed NewYorker would never think the same of me again. And it was so. I shall not forget, if I live a hundred years, his final disgusted glance. If anything further was needed to crush me utterly, I do not know what it could be.

But one's friends are not the only difficulty that stand in the way of a

loitering gait. I found, fortunately, just the right companion for my first journey, and when I told a few young college fellows of my plan, fellows who were free for the summer, they asked if they, also, could n't be booked up for certain Thursdays until Monday; and before I knew it, I had a line of applications, as though I were handing out coupons instead of the possibility of aching feet and perspiring brows.

On the first day when we fared forth— it was with a friend named Jim-we had no sooner started to cross the great Queensboro' Bridge, which hangs like a giant harp over the East River, drawing Long Island into a closer brotherhood with New York, than we had offers of lifts from total strangers. Yet they say Manhattan is a cold city! We never found it so, at least not on that wonderful July evening when we started out with scrip and staff; for we had decided that as we were going to do so old-fashioned a thing as walk, we would carry oldfashioned paraphernalia, called by pleasant old-fashioned names. Bundle and cane ill comported with so quiet a pilgrimage as ours was to be. We would imagine ourselves travelers in Merrie Old England in a season now sadly gone. We would wear old clothes, and take not one article with us that we did not actually need. No burdens for our city-tired backs; only the happy little necessary impedimenta, such as a toothbrush, a razor, a comb, an extra shirt or two, and the one tie we wore. And of course a book. I chose Hazlitt's "Table Talk," Jim took George Moore's "Avowals," all the spiritual food we needed.

It takes no little courage to walk over a bridge that leads out of crowded Manhattan. Not that you want to stay in the thundering city; but this is a dangerous way to get out of it alive. You feel like an ant, or like one of those infinitesimal figures in a picture which gives a bird's-eye view of "our village." To discover your own lack of importance in a busy, whirling world, I would prescribe the perils of walking in and immediately around New York. Never does one feel so small, so absolutely worm-like. If you wish to preserve your life, your day is one long series of dodges. Pedestrians are not popular

with motorists, and virtually every one. is a motorist nowadays. If you walk up the Rialto of a morning, you are convinced that every one on earth wishes to become, or is, an actor. If you edit a popular magazine, you know that every one has literary ambitions. But if you walk over Queensboro' Bridge or any of the other gateways that lead out into the country, you are certain that there is not a human being except yourself who does not own a car.

Where do they come from, these gorgeous and humble machines? And whither are they going? How many homes have been mortgaged in order that Henry and Mary may take a trip each week-end? What necessities of life have been relinquished so that the whole family may speed to the seashore at the first touch of warm weather? It is an exhilarating, healthful pastime, but I have only one friend who motors to my liking that is, at the rate of twenty miles an hour. My other acquaintances employ chauffeurs who suffer from the great American disease, speed, and they are whizzed here and there, often against their wills, I grant you, and they expect me to care for this abominable way of traveling. The hillsides rush by; you see nothing, you hear nothing save the voice of the siren, and you arrive at your destination a physical and mental wreck, with eyes that sting and ears that hum. No sooner is your body normally adjusted than luncheon is over, and you are told to get back into the car that you may all rush madly to the next town. There is a strange and inexplicable desire in every chauffeur I have ever seen to overtake the machine just ahead of him. Every turn reveals a line of motors dashing, as yours is, to Heaven knows where; and if you toot your horn and pass one triumphantly, there is, as always in life, another victory to be won the instant you overcome the immediate obstacle. Why not sit back and let the other fellow pass you? But no one will in America. It seems to be a long, delirious race for precedence, and motoring, instead of being the delight it should be, has become a nightmare to One of these days I am going to have a car of my own, run it myself, and go where and when I please; for no one

me.

loves motoring more than I when it is really motoring and not a sudden madness. That is why, on this occasion, I preferred the jog-trot afoot; and that is why Jim and I marched forth on a certain day, with minds free from tire troubles, and no intention of getting anywhere in particular until it suited our royal convenience. We had thor

People are too preoccupied to give you even a cursory glance.

We knew there was apt to be nothing at all interesting just over the bridge; for we had motored that way too frequently, and Long Island City, I was well aware, was nothing to see. It was like a poor relative of the metropolis, a person that a rich man paid to remain hidden away in the country, shabby beyond belief, and with no knowledge of city ways, none of the coquetry of young and smiling sophisticated Miss Manhattan.

oughly made up our minds on that. We would lunch or sup where it suited our whim, and we would n't look at our watches, but would seek to allay our hunger only when we felt healthily hungry. And we knew we would sleep all the better for so real a spirit of freedom.

That first afternoon we walked to Long Island City over the bridge, for we wanted the thrill of getting out of town on foot, not through the more comfortable process of a train or a motor. Besides, it would savor somewhat of cheating if we started out on a walking tour seated in a commuter's coach. Yet it was not always our intention to walk. We made up our minds that sometimes we would steal rides, or beg for them, or take a train over an uninteresting part of the country. And if I could locate my slow-driving friend this summer, I intended to ask him to loaf with me in his car sometime.

There is one charming thing about New York: you can go anywhere and dress as you please and attract not the slightest attention. Our knickerbockers and a duffle-bag were nothing to anybody; neither was the Japanese staff I carried, which some friends had just brought to me from the land of Nippon.

It was dusk when we started to cross the great bridge, and, as I have said, motors were cluttered at the entrance and were doubtless thick up

on it, running like a continuous black chain to the island. During the War, soldiers often stood at this entrance of the bridge, waiting to be given a lift; and this may be the reason why so many motorists still think of every pedestrian as worthy of a ride, and why it was that so often we were invited, as we strolled along this open pathway, to move more swiftly to the other side. But we spurned all such advances, kindly as they were meant; for on one's first day out, the legs are in good condition, and there is a certain pride in wishing to strut it alone without even the aid of one's staff.

The sky-scrapers loomed in the growing darkness, as we proceeded on our way, like a Babylonian vision; and one by one the lights blossomed in tall windows, until the city behind us was a vast honeycomb of beauty, with the river like a silver girdle surrounding it. Ahead of us smoke-stacks belched forth their black substance, and one pitied the folk who, having worked all day in glorious Manhattan, must turn at evening to the hideous prospect beyond the river, when they might have remained in this jeweled place. Gasometers reared their horrid profiles, and chimneys, like a battalion of black soldiers, stood