Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/105

 86 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS says : * * It has been my point of outlook into the Universe. . . I have tilled its soil, gathered its harvests, waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped what I have sown. While 1 delved I did not lose sight of the sky overhead ; while I gath- ered its bread and meat for my body, I did not neglect to gath- er its bread and meat for my soul. ' ' In Roxbury, Delaware County, New York, in a house that stood near the old ancestral home, John Burroughs was bom April 3, 1837. His earlier years were spent in various pursuits — farming, teaching and fruit raising. About twenty years of his life were spent in the service of the government as a clerk in the treasury department and as a national bank examiner, but during these twenty years each day some of his waking hours were spent in nature study, and in laying up a great store of intellectual capital that in later years blossomed into the fruit- age and harvest of descriptions and dehneations that have made him the real nature student of the age. Of the several occupations mentioned above, farming was the most congenial to him, because it put him nearest nature. so well worth doing'' asks this writer. One's first impres- sion after glancing about his well-built cabin, with the neces- sities of body and soul close at hand, is a vicarious satisfac- tion that here at least is one who knew what he wanted to do and has done it. Clara Barrus has well said, * * The readers of Mr. Burroughs crave the personal relation to him. They feel a sense of deep gratitude to one who has shown them how divine is the soil under foot — veritable star-dust from the gardens of the Eter- nal. He has made us to feel as one with the whole cosmos, not only with birds and trees, and rocks and flowers, but also with the elemental forces, powers which are friendly or un- friendly according as we put ourselves in right or wrong rela- tions with them. He has shown us the Divine in the comimon and near at hand; that Heaven lies about us here in this world; that the glorious and the miraculous are not to be sought afar off, but are here and now ; and that love of the
 * * The thing which a man 's nature calls him to do — what else