The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-02-12
THE LITERARY OUTLOOK.
FARMER JOHN BURROUGHS OUT
FOR HIS ROUND OF WINTER
VISITS.

tinguished HistOrians-The Liking
of Authors for Fruit FarminG-A
New Fable About Joaquin Miller.
New York, Feb. n.-John Burroughs.
like other farmers, walls himself of the
leisure of the winter 10 make visits. He
has been here for a week or ten days. visit
ing especially his friend Richard Watson
Glider, the editor of the Century. but also
going about and seeing the brethren Of
the literary fraternity generally. He has
intimacies with the younger men as well
as the older, and is admired alike by both
for his fine independence and sturdy sim
pliclty of life and aim. Before coming here
he passed several weeks with friends at
Cambridge and Boston. There he came
under the malgn touch of the grip. and
was still showing the effects of it when
he reached New York.
Even in the busy season, I think Mr..
Burroughs does not allow his farming to
become too exclusive an interest. His
place up on the west bank of the Hudson,
near the village of Esopus, has often been
described. 1t is simply one of the little
fruit farms so familiar in that locality,
with-nearby, but not ADJOINING small
low-water tract, that Mr. Burroughs mas
acquired within the last three or four
years. and developed into a celery plan
tation. He has, in a way. home or both
the farm proper and the annex. on the
farm proper is the family homestead-a
simple house of the better sort common
in the locality, wherein the daily life does
not differ much from that of most we'll
TODD country households. On the annex
or the celery patch, is a rather rude cabin,
which is maintained chiefly as a convent
ence refuge for those who are caring for
the ground and crop, but in one corner
of which-without any special shutting OH
Mr.. Burroughs manages to maintain
sort of study. Through a good part of
the main house-to reserve TO himself
the year he is abe-here are an
some good hours each day for reading and
writing. Ii goes without the saying that
in the methods of his literary work, he
is not much like a popular novelist. He
doesn't have contracts running to nineteen
hundred and something. pledsing him TO
deliver, stoutly packed and on the cars.
so many hundred thousand words a year
of his inspired compositions. And he
doesn't set 10 his writing, and leave off,
at the sound of a punctual electric bell,
nor does he prosecute IL on table so
contrived as to make an automatic count
in plain view before him, of every word
he pens, that he may know, as he goes on,
whether he is maintaining the pace tnat
The fulfllment of his contracts requires.
Imagine such a thing for John Burroughs,
man who would spend half day sit
ting on a log, simply TO make sure of the
whistle of a strange bird!
Anna Katharine Green has just compiet-
ed a new novel, and the serial publication
of it will begin in a month or two. 1t is
entitled Agatha Webb and 1 can say
for it that it is. in point of interest and
completely of pot, as notable as anything
the author has ever written. 1t is rather
a long story, but the reader, once started
on it, will never give over until he has
solved the whole mystery. With any nov
elist ingenuity in plot construction has
to be a clear gift, No writer can come
by such ingenuity by merely setting to
work to acquire il. And not infrequently
novelists who have this gift produce with
great rapidly. But Mrs. Green is not Of
this class. She proved in her very first
novel, 1.-THE LeaVenworth Case" publish
ed when she was 80 years Old, that she
had the art of plot-weaving in no ordin-
airy degree; but she has always been rather
slow and deliberately painstaking in her
work. On her new novel, she tells me,
she has spent two full years. In private
life, Anna Katharine Green is Mrs. Charles
Rohlf Green was her maiden name; and,
as she had published four novels under
that name before her marriage, and had
thus made it well known to the reading
public, she retained it for her books after
her marriage. She is a native of Brook
lyn, but her home at present is in Buff
falo.
Mr. W. D. Howells is. a novelist of as
little fixity in his residence as Hawthorne
was. Though in a way chained as with
iron to his native town of Salem, and lv-
ing always so apart from the drive and
urgency of the world Hawthorne, after
all, had more homes in the course of his
scant 50 years of life than men even of
great activity are apt to have. MIR. How
ellis is a very different parsonage, being
in fashion, not a little of the man of
the world; but even for such man ne
has moved early and often. He seems now
to have given up Boston for good; for
the last six or seven years he has been
a consistent New Yorker, even to the point
of absentipg himself as completely as pos
sible from the city between May and Oc-
tober. But during these six or seven years
he has shown more or less division of mind
regarding the part of the city he wanted
20 live in. Twice or more he has made
trial of what is called down town." es-
tablishing himself on the East Side, in the
district between Fourteenth and Twenty-
third streets land he has experimental with
the quarter near lower Central park 1t
is in this latter locality that he is living
now. Something over a year ago, it viii
be recalled. he came to be quite seriously
out of health so much so that he went
to Europe in search of relief He has
quite recovered of late, and I understand
that this winter he is unusually well
I understand from friend of JOAQUIN
Miller's that he is very much annoyed at
the story widely published of late that
he was going on the vaudeville stage He
is now on a lecturing tour-a perfectly
plain, straight-out lecturing tour, without
gimcracks or song-and-dance attachments
of any sort-and that is all there is in the
story. Joaquin Miller has proba bly, haa
more fiction written about him than al
most any other man. That is the penalty
he has had to pay for being an original
He is an original-so much everybody
knows; and. therefore, it has seemed like
w n oveT-irna gins tive writers tbat o,.1...