The Washington herald., 1907-08-18

could go. When through with the acad-
/ envy he became country school teacher,
4 following that calling eight years. Then,
despairing of ever fulfilling his ambition
/ 10 be a literary figure unless he got out
/ into the great world somehow, he went to
Washington and personally put in an
/ application TO the late Hugh McCulloch,
/ then Secretary Of the Treasury. for gov
! eminent employment. McCulloch listened
and then asked:
Who's your Congressman, young
man?"
! I don't know" replied Burroughs. who
/ added. according to the often printed
story, that he was personally acquainted
/ with no member OF the national legis-
lature.
But" he went on ingenuousIy, L
think / could do Office work, and the sal
airy would be Of value to me In my liter
| airy career.
"Oh. you write. do you?" exclaimed the
official, who had become interested.
/ What do you write?"
! Burroughs said he wrote verses and
showed one of his poems, which McCuI-
! loch read and approved. after which ne
gave the poet the Job he wanted. It was
not much Of a job for pay, being that Of
| caretaker of a vault full Of money, but
as his duties were only to sit al a table
/ in front of the vault, it gave him more
time 20 write than he had when school
| teaching. and, in fact, it was while he
was holding this Job that he wrote Wake
/ Robin. his first book
| That was in 1s64-e5, and It was then
that he first knew Whitman. who was a
military hospital nurse The two were
often short of money in those days, but
neither minded being hard up then.
! Burroughs rose to be Treasury clerk
after a while. but lacked only three years
Of forty before he got any farther Then
in 1873 he was made national bank exam
liner and kept the place eleven years, but
he abandoned Washington as a residence
in 1874. and ever since has lived on his
farm on the Hudson, some miles north
Of New York His home is called River
by" and It Is a solid stone house. over
] looking the great stream that flows almost
due south from Albany to New York But
it is not his home in the summer; when
the warm weather comes each year. he
leaves 'Riverby' to the other members
Of his family and betakes himself to a
curious structure which he calls Slab
sides" some two miles back OF the river.
| There he lives a life so nearly ideal,
for those who like that sort Of thing, that
he and 'Slabsides" and his ways are the
subjects Of regular feature stories in
many Of the popular magazines and most
Of the Sunday supplements.
/ His farm is devoted TO fruit raising al
most exclusively. be likes fruit trees al
most as well as he likes birds; these he
| studies with the utmost enthusiasm. He
has said that he would walk forty miles
/ any time TO see a new bird, or even a
rare one, but he was amazed one day
when West with the President because
the latter was willing to ride on horse
/ back ten miles and back to see a big herd
| Of elk.
| Burroughs doesn't regard writing as
work, but as pleasure. He says that ten
women to one man read his books, which
is probably true.
Besides being a close friend Of the Pres
ident. Clifford Pinchot has the distinc-
1 ton Of being the first American-korn cit
lien Of the United States to become a pro-
fessional forester.
! He went into the profession from the