Transcriber's note:
Minor spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been harmonized. Obvious typos have been corrected.Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in the original text.
THE SEER OF SLABSIDES
IN THE DOORWAY, SLABSIDES
THE
SEER OF SLABSIDES
BY
DALLAS LORE SHARP
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1911 AND 1921, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO
HENRY FORD
LOVER OF BIRDS
FRIEND OF JOHN BURROUGHS
THE SEER OF SLABSIDES
THE
SEER OF SLABSIDES
I
This title, "The Seer of Slabsides," doesnot quite fit John Burroughs—the BurroughsI knew. He was a see-er. Alover of nature, he watched the waysof bird and beast; a lover of life, hethought out and wrought out a serenehuman philosophy that made him teacherand interpreter of the simple and thenear at hand rather than of such thingsas are hidden and far off. He was altogetherhuman; a poet, not a prophet; agreat lover of the earth, of his portion ofit in New York State, and of everythingand everybody dwelling there with him.4He has added volumes to the area ofNew York State, and peopled them withimmortal folk—little folk, bees, bluebirds,speckled trout, and wild strawberries.He was chiefly concerned withliving at Slabsides, or at WoodchuckLodge, and with writing what he lived.He loved much, observed and interpretedmuch, speculated a little, butdreamed none at all. "The Lover ofWoodchuck Lodge" I might havecalled him, rather than "The Seer ofSlabsides."
Pietro, the sculptor, has made him restingupon a boulder, his arm across his forehead,as his eyes, shielded from the sun,peer steadily into the future and the faraway.I sat with the old naturalist onthis same boulder. It was in October, and5they laid him beside it the followingApril, on his eighty-fourth birthday. Iwatched him shield his eyes with hisarm, as the sculptor has made him, andgaze far away over the valley to the rollinghills against the sky, where his looklingered, sadly, wearily, for a moment attheir vaunting youth and beauty; thencoming instantly back to the field belowus, he said: "This field is as full ofwoodchucks as it was eighty years ago.I caught one right here yesterday. Howeternally interesting life is! I've studiedthe woodchuck all my