Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/107

 88 FAMOUS LIVING AMEBICANS land, France, Gtermanyy Italy — so rich in historical associa- tioBy steeped in legend and poetry, the very look of the fields redolent of the past — and then tnm to my own native hills, how poor and barren they seem I — not one touch anywhere of that which makes the charm of the old world — no architec- ture, no great names; in fact, no past. They look naked and prosy, yet how I love them and cling to them I They are writ- ten over with the lives of the first settlers that cleared the fields and built the stone walls — simple, commonplace Uves, worthy and interesting, but without the appeal of heroism or adventure. ''Oh, the old farm days! how the fragrance of them still lingers in my heart ! the spring with its sugar-making and the general awakening about the farm, the returning birds, and the full, lucid trout-stream ; the summer with its wild berries, its haying, its cool, fragrant woods ; the fall with its nuts, its game, its apple-gathering, its holidays; the winter with its school, its sport on ice and snow, its apple bins in the cellar, its long nights by the fireside, its voice of fox-hounds on the mountains, its sound of flails in the bam — how much I still dream about these things. ' ' Probably sixty years of the seventy-seven that John Bur- roughs has lived have been spent in the study of birds and flowers ; and this study, too, out in the open, the natural en- vironment of birds and flowers. The result of this study and observation is his nature books, so fraught with delightful originalities. His own life has been so free of unnatural restraint that he cannot brook restraint toward any of God's creatures. He says: ''The songs of caged birds are always disappointing because such birds have nothing but their musical qualities to recommend them. We have separated them from that which gives quality and meaning to their songs. I have never yet seen a caged bird that I wanted — at least, not on account of its song — or a wild flower that I wished to transfer to my garden. The caged skylark will sing its song sitting on a bit of turf in the bottom of the cage ; but you want to stop your ears, it is so harsh and sibilant and penetrating. But up and