"W

EST PARK!" called the trainman. I reached for my hat and glanced at my neighbors, almost expecting them to arouse from the apathy of the journey and show the stir of concern that is seen when a matter of unusual interest is imminent. The passengers saw only a small station on the west shore of the Hudson and a few houses straggling along a road that lost itself in a range of wooded hills. To me, however, it was a veritable Mecca, for over the brow of that hill lay Slabsides, the goal of many pilgrimages. To this rustic lodge have come all manner of men and women to do honor to the man who has taught the simple life and sent his visitors away with an increased perspective for the things in life that really count.

But my pilgrimage was different. Never before had any one approached with the hope of accomplishing the purpose for which I was there on that perfect spring morning. For I had come to secure moving pictures of John Burroughs in his haunts, so that the Mecca of the fortunate few might be brought to all.

We stepped from the train, adjusted the camera, and looked for a setting for our first picture. Fortune favored us. Two others were left by the departing train, a man and a woman. Necessity called for a prompt introduction, which was at once effected without the aid of a third party. The woman, a friend of John Burroughs, was bringing to the philosopher of nature a true American, a Winnebago Indian, who, after receiving an advanced degree from Yale, was on his way West to devote his life to the Indians of the plains. What more could we ask for? Here was a real Indian to give spice to the group. Hardly had explanations ended and our new acquaintances consented to act as composition" for the picture, when Mr. Burroughs was seen coming down a shady path to meet

us.

On he came, waving his hand in greeting, a dog bounding on before him. The operator turned the crank, and as Mr. Burroughs seized our hands and pointed to a robin building a nest on the cross-piece of a near-by telegraph pole the first scene of our little drama was enacted.

Then up the path we went, along a country road arched with trees as old as the Republic, Mr. Burroughs naming the birds. whose songs were filling our ears with a chorus of delight. Within five minutes we heard the notes of the three varieties of vireo, and then, turning in at the gateway in a high stone wall, we saw the gray gables and quaint vine-covered doorway of Riverby, the picturesque house of rough-hewn stone which Mr. Burroughs built forty years ago when he left Washington and chose this place on the banks of the Hudson as his permanent home.

Here was the place to expose more film. On the lawn between the house and the river is a well with a stone coping. Again the reel moved. Mr. Burroughs, carrying a bucket, stepped from the doorway, and, on reaching the well, started to draw the water, when a joyous shout of children's voices caused him to look up, and, racing to meet him, came his two granddaughters and his grandson, John Burroughs II. The small boy was seized, tossed up on his shoulder, and while the little girls encouraged the demonstrations of Bunty, the small dog, Mrs. Burroughs and Dr. Barrus Mr. Burroughs's biographer-joined the group, and we wished the supply of film had been unlimited so that we could have continued to register for all time that family group.

For Mr. Burroughs, Riverby meant back to the soil, after years of exile in the Treasury Department at Washington. It was there, while sitting in front of a great vault, that he returned in memory to the scenes of his boyhood, roamed again the hills of Delaware County, and fished for trout in the Pepacton. These memories of sunshine and storm, of fields and forests, were written down with the crispness of the invigorating Catskill air, and the result was his first nature book, "Wake Robin."

For generations the Burroughs family had been farmers. The force of this inheritance at last became irresistible, and in 1874 Riverby was chosen as the place for a home. The stones were hewn near by and set in place under Mr. Burroughs's supervision. Some of the stones in the chimney he placed himself. One day, finding that his mason

did not come, he climbed up and began building the chimney. The old Scotch mason, whose home was on the east shore of the Hudson, and who crossed the river every night by ferry, saw from the opposite bank a man at work on his job. He hastened across, half intoxicated. On seeing who was doing his work he felt easier, and after surveying it said:

"Weel, you are a hahndy mahın !”

At this spot, six miles above Poughkeepsie, the river bends to the east, so that the West Shore Railroad leaves the river edge and passes back of the village; the Burroughs farm, sloping to the shore, furnishes an ideal site for a vineyard. Mr. Burroughs started plowing, and in his vigorous prose described his feelings thus:

"How I soaked up the sunshine to-day! At night I glowed all over; my whole being had had an earth bath; such a feeling of freshly plowed land in every cell of my brain ! The furrow had struck in, the sunshine had photographed itself upon my soul."

ature.

For forty years, aided of late by his son Julian, he alternated grape culture with literSome of the choicest table grapes in the New York market came from Riverby. The California grapes at length began to come East, so that now, instead of selling for twenty-five cents a pound, three or four cents is all that can be obtained.

So, as we looked over the green and sturdy vines on one of whose supports a wren was bringing up her little family, Mr. Burroughs told us that next spring the vines would be torn up and the slope seeded with grass. It was evident that we were just in time to secure a record of John Burroughs of the vineyard. The camera was again in readiness; Mr. Burroughs, in his shirt-sleeves, seized a hoe and attacked the weeds with such energy that the film with difficulty kept the pace. All who see that picture will realize that old age has no terror for John Burroughs, notwithstanding his seventy-seven years.

To escape the restrictions of a well-ordered household, Burroughs built a bark study a few hundred feet from the house. Here in this "study," surrounded with books on three sides and a rough stone fireplace on the other, many books and articles were written. At intervals an observer may see Mr. Burroughs appear at the door and walk a few feet to a summer-house; here he sits reading a magazine or dreaming of the wonders

of nature. Below him, stretching away for. miles in either direction, lies the majestic Hudson. But he turns away with a shake of his great gray head and says: "This great river has no real place in my life. I long for the Pepacton and the mountain streams of my youth." A record of the haunts of John Burroughs, therefore, is not complete without. this walk to the summer-house. But, as our moving picture plainly shows, from Mr. Burroughs's point of view nothing is really complete without John B. II, who runs in, breaks upon the thoughts of nature's wonders, and is caught up and borne to a near-by tree to look into a bird-box and find out whether or not it has been selected for a nest.

As years passed the fame of Riverby grew; visitors increased in numbers, until it became evident that something must be done or all work would cease. Years before, Walt Whitman and John Burroughs explored the densely wooded hills about two miles back from the river. There was one spot in particular that attracted them-a hollow on the edge of a peat bog. It was surrounded by lichen-covered ledges and heavy vines, giving an indescribable sense of isolation, of closeness with nature. There Mr. Burroughs built Slabsides, a substantial two-story shack made of rough-hewn timbers. Here one could commune with nature undisturbed. When the spirit of writing was upon him, Mr. Burroughs would live here alone, keeping house backwoodsman fashion while he gave us many masterpieces.

The hours were rushing by, with Slabsides, the best of all, still to be recorded. But first a scene most incongruous in character was to be enacted. We were to see this child of the soil, this man who delights in primitive nature, crank his Ford car, and, with little John on the front seat, drive off with all the steady assurance of an expert chauffeur, which, indeed, he really is.

The Ford having been pictured with signal success, back we went to the West Park Station, across the track, and along the road winding toward the hills. A quarter of a mile and a rough path appeared on the left. This trail leads straight over the mountain to Slabsides, and needs a good pair of lungs and a steady foot to compass it. It was by this path that Mr. Burroughs took Theodore Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt on their first visit. We intended to photograph Mr. Burroughs climbing up, but we failed to take into account the weight of the

camera, that tipped the scales at eighty pounds, and which seemed increasingly heavy as we progressed. There was nothing to do but forego the trail and follow the wood road, that, after all, proved most picturesque. The film showed Mr. Burroughs, hat in hand, walking up this road; the pine and hemlocks almost meet overhead and cast dancing shadows over the road as Mr. Burroughs climbs. At a turn he stops a moment and picks up a staff to aid in the last steep ascent. At last he reaches a rocky ledge in whose base is a cave. This is the refrigerator of Slabsides. Here are kept the butter, milk, and eggs. One very hot day a party of Vassar girls got this far and ventured into the cave; the deliciously cool temperature was so attractive that it was with difficulty that Mr. Burroughs persuaded them to come forth.

Stopping here a moment to see that all is well, he climbs the ladder up the face of the cliff and is at Slabsides. This leads to the back door, but was used in this instance for picturesque effect. A delegation from the Burroughs Club which had arrived during the day now appeared, paying its respect to the man from whom comes their inspiration. They are seen mounting the steps, greeted by the veteran naturalist, and are invited in to write their names in the visitors' book.

We gather around him as he talks of the book of nature, the marvelous story told by the rocks. He lives again for us those days in Washington when Lincoln was President and Walt Whitman dropped in every Sunday morning for breakfast. But whether we talked of Washington, or the first trip to England, when the young Burroughs with two companions guarded $50,000,000 of United States bonds, or the trip through the Yellowstone with Roosevelt, or the Alaskan expedition with Harriman, Mr. Burroughs always reverted to those boyhood days in Roxbury, New York, where he went to school in the little old red school-house with Jay Gould, and where in the woods or by the trout streams he laid the foundation for that vast fund of nature lore that is at once the delight and despair of his readers. If one is to know the real John Burroughs, it is evident that he must be seen among his native hills.

And so with the setting sun the chance for more pictures was over and a day we will delight to remember was at an end. But

not so my desire to see Mr. Burroughs at Woodchuck Lodge. So at one is he here with the environment of his youth, so intimate his sentiment for the mountains which he says now stand to him for his father and his mother, that it really seems as if he had sipped of the spring of eternal youth. The weight of years slips away and there comes a mental and physical vigor that explains how the work of his pen in his seventy-eighth year is of even greater power and interest than any previous writing.

My delight can be imagined when in September I received a card asking me to become for a few days one of the family at Woodchuck Lodge.

The journey from the West Shore station at Weehawken is one of continued scenic interest, with pretty little suburban towns, then the Hudson and the majestic Highlands. Our stopping-place is Roxbury, a town of less than five hundred population, the early home of the Burroughs and Gould families. As we slow down at the station there is Mr. Burroughs. in the Ford car waiting to take us to Woodchuck Lodge.

Up the main street we speed (but not over fifteen miles an hour!), past the Gould memorial church and the attractive home of Mrs. Shepard, across the Pepacton-immortal because a certain young man made an excursion to its outlet and later wrote about itpast the stone school-house, built in 1813, where Johnny Burroughs experienced his first day in school, through some dairy farms and up the hill to Woodchuck Lodge.

Mrs. Burroughs, her gingham apron fluttering in the breeze, was on the porch to greet us and to announce that supper was almost ready; also, would I prefer the spare room upstairs or to share the porch with Mr. Burroughs? Of course I chose the latter. The spare room had no charms compared with the chance to occupy a cot on the porch with the veteran naturalist.

Hardly had the stains of travel been removed by an application of cold spring water than we were called to supper, which was served in the living-room. The table, and indeed all the furniture, was made by Mr. Burroughs, who delighted to use wherever possible sticks of strange and fantastic shapes. But the supper itself—it is difficult to find words adequate to describe it! The mountain air and Mrs. Burroughs's delicious cooking formed a combination that could not be surpassed.