After the evening meal, Mr. Burroughs took me over to the old Burroughs' home, where his brother now lives, and who could have experienced greater pleasure than I, when it was announced that I was to occupy Uncle John's room for the time of my stay! To think that I should look out from the windows that he looked from, and would see the scenes that inspired him so much during the formative period of his life, was all joy to me. To know the interesting family of his brother, and to sleep under the roof that had for so many years, brought happiness to the man whom I had gone far to see, these were experiences that add much to one's resources of life. Here in this beautiful valley among the hills of the western Catskills, nestled the village in which grew the boy who now, at seventy three years young, brings people from all parts of the world to his door. A man who has put man and Nature on good terms and brought happiness to thousands of homes. No wonder he sighs for the hills and for the home of his youth! They gave him his first love for Nature.
His interest in the affairs of the farm was keen. He would ask his nephew: "How is your crop of oats turning out? Aren't you afraid to leave the shocks in the field too long? I should think they would begin to rot. When are you going to cut the field up by the road?" Nothing of interest about the farm escaped his attention, and though his interest was altogether a personal interest, you would think he was getting half the revenue of the crop.
Before going to the woods and mountains the next morning, Mr. Burroughs showed me a copy of the Atlantic Monthly containing his essay, "Expression," published in November, 1860, and asked if I cared to read the essay. I found it interesting and as perfect a piece of work as John Burroughs ever did. It begins: "The law of expression is the law of degrees,--much, more, most.... There is no waste material in a good proverb; it is clear meat like an egg,--a happy result of logic, with the logic left out, and the writer who shall thus condense his wisdom, and as far as possible give the two poles of thought in every expression, will most thoroughly reach men's minds and hearts." Thus ends the first paragraph of the essay, and it continues to abound in Transcendentalism to the end. The following is the last and much quoted paragraph: "Johnson's periods act like a lever of the third kind, the power always exceeds the weight raised." It is filled with proverbs and brilliant thought. Perhaps it is Emersonian, but certainly it is different from anything Emerson ever did. It is so entirely different from anything else Burroughs did that one can hardly feel while reading it that he is following after the author of "Wake Robin," or "Winter Sunshine." It is so well done, however, that one cannot help but feel that if he had given himself over to that form of literature, he would have rivaled Emerson, or any other writer, in that field of expression.