The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-03-29

vising him that the naturalist was
dead
Burroughs had planned to celebrate
his S4th birthday with Henry Ford,
II. S. Firestone and Thomas A. Edi-
son, April g.. and was returning from
the coast with this idea in mind.
Attacked Mature Fakers."
Burroughs death removes from
American life its most beloved. nat
nralist. Il was the unconventional in
writing and in nature that appealed
to him.
Burroughs was a close friend of
Theodore Roosevelt and the two often
ing bird and animal life. During the
last few years, he haa spent most of
his summers camping with Thomas A.
Edison and Henry Ford
In 1904, he made his famous attack
on Ernest Seton Thompson and other
naturalists, criticising statements in
their works and referring to them as
mature fakers.''
Dean of Nature Writer'S. a.
John Burroughs was the venerable
dean of nature-writers in the United
States. Thru a score of books he
shared with countless readers his life
long intimacy with birds, bees, flowers
and the whole out-of-doors. His high
ly developed powers of observation
were the marvel of his critics.
His flowing white beard, his kindly
mein, his whole habit of life, and his
literary style were rather reminiscent
of that famous New England school
of essayists a generation or two before
him. His earliest writing, on "Ex-
preston" was at one time widely mis-
taken for the work of Emerson, a
close reader of whom Burroughs had
been from youth. His later works
on nature suggested something OF
Thoreau, but, as critics said. Bur-
roughs was the more sociable writer.
He Loved Nature.
He learned to love nature when he
drove cows at his birthplace farm,
Roxbury, among the Catskills, in New
York state, but anything like a liter
airy composition was bugbear to him
as a youth. The story is told of how
when he was fourteen, in common
with the members of his class at
school, he was requested to write
twenty lines of original composition.
He copied something out of a comic
almanac. His theft was detected.
Again in desperation upon his second
trial he paid Jay Gould. his classmate,
so cents for a twelve line verse which
he handed in as his own.
He was born in 1897. In 1863 he
went to Washington with something
of an inclination to enlist in the Union
army, but he decided to seek a gov
eminent office. 1t is related that
with only a few of his poems as Gre
dentials he walked into the treasury
department and asked for job. It
was agreed that his Vernal verses
really smelt of the woods. and
smacked of sincerity. He would be a
safe man to watch the treasury vaults.
He agreed to take the place. At
little desk, facing the huge iron vault
where he kept tabs on those who
went to handle the $50, 600, 900 stored
there, he began writing of the birds,
to relieve his Inconsistencies. The re-
suit was his first book, wake obin."
Took Life Easily.
Some years later, after work as a
treasury clerk and a national bank ex-
he bought a few acres at West Park
on the Hudson, where among the
loaded trellises of vineyard he found
more pleasure than in the closets
of greenbacks." There he renewed
his emotional intercourse with Ma
ture, building real house overlooking
the river-just above Poughkeepsie.
When rural civilization pressed little
close about him. he built his 'Slab-
sides" cabin a mile or two back in
the woods
He did not go at his studies with
the set determination of an herbalist,
but took life easily, and wrote breez-
lily when the spirit moved him Of the