Chapter XXII (7)

For eighteen years I was amassing facts and fancies, developing a crude intelligence, waiting for the vitalization of the heart. Then Love, the Supreme Teacher, came; and his first lesson was,

RENUNCIATION.

I was to give up father, and mother, home and kindred, friends and country, and follow where he would lead me, into a land strange and far off. Child-bearing and child-losing; the limitations and delights of frontier life; the intimate society of such great and individual men as Sam Houston, and the men who fought with him; the intense feelings induced by war, its uncertainties and possibilities, and the awful abiding in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with the pestilence that walked in darkness and the sickness that destroyed at noonday;—all these events with their inevitable “asides” were instrumental in the education and preparation of the seventeen years of my married life.

The calamitous lesson of widowhood, under peculiarly tragic circumstances, was the last initiation of a heart already broken and humbled before Him who doeth all things well, no matter how hard the stroke may be. I thought all was over then; yet all was just beginning. It was the open door to a new life—a life full of comforts, and serene, still,

DELIGHTFUL STUDIES.

Though I had written stories to please my children, and many things to please myself, it had never occurred to me that money could be made by writing. The late William Libbey, a man of singular wisdom and kindness, first made me understand that my brain and my ten fingers were security for a good living. From my first effort I began to gather in the harvest of all my years of study and reading and private writing. For there is this peculiarity about writing—that if in any direction it has merit, it will certainly find a market.

For fifteen years I wrote short stories, poems, editorials, and articles on every conceivable subject, from Herbert Spencer’s theories, to gentlemen’s walking sticks; but bringing to every piece of work, if it was only ten lines, the best of my knowledge and ability; and so earning, with a great deal of pleasure, a very good living. During the earlier years of this time I worked and read on an average

FIFTEEN HOURS A DAY;

for I knew that, to make good work, I must have constant fresh material; must keep up to date in style and method; and must therefore _read_ far more than I wrote. But I have been an omnivorous reader all my life long, and no changes, no cares of home and children, have ever interfered with this mental necessity. In the most unlikely places and circumstances, I looked for books, and found them. These fifteen years on the weekly and monthly periodicals gave me the widest opportunities for information. I had an alcove in the Astor Library, and I practically lived in it. I slept and ate at home, but I lived in that City of Books. I was in the prime of life, but neither society, amusements, nor pleasures of any kind, could draw me away from the source of all my happiness and profit.

Suddenly, after this long novition, I received the “call” for a different work. I had

AN ACCIDENT

which confined me to my room, and which, I knew, would keep me from active work for some months. I fretted for my work, as dry wood frets an inch from the flame, and said, “I shall lose all I have gained; I shall fall behind in the race; all these things are against me.” They were all for me. A little story of what seemed exceptional merit, had been laid away, in the hope that I might some day find time to extend it into a novel. A prisoner in my chair, I finished the book in six weeks, and sent it to Dodd, Mead & Co. On Thanksgiving morning, a letter came, accepting the book, and any of my readers can imagine what a happy Thanksgiving Day that was! This book was “Jan Vedder’s Wife,” and its great and immediate success indicated to me the work I was at length ready for. I was then in my fifty-second year, and every year had been a preparation for the work I have since pursued. I went out from that sick room sure of my

VOCATION;

and, with a confidence founded on the certainty of my equipment, and a determination to trust humanity, and take my readers only into green pastures and ways of purity and heroism, I ventured on my new path as a novelist.

I cannot close this paper without a few words to those who wish to profit by it. I want them to be sure of a few points which, in my narrative, I may not have emphasized sufficiently.

WORDS OF COUNSEL

1. Men and women succeed _because they take pains to succeed_. Industry and patience are almost genius; and successful people are often more distinguished for resolution and perseverance than for unusual gifts. They make determination and unity of purpose supply the place of ability.

2. Success is the reward of those who “spurn delights and live laborious days.” We learn to do things by _doing them. One of the great secrets of success is “pegging away.”_ No disappointment must discourage, and a run back must often be allowed, in order to take a longer leap forward.

3. _No opposition must be taken to heart._ Our enemies often help us more than our friends. Besides, a head-wind is better than no wind. Who ever got anywhere in a dead calm?

4. _A fatal mistake is to imagine that success is some stroke of luck._ This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune _sells_ her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.

5. We have been told, for centuries, to watch for opportunities, and to strike while the iron is hot. Very good; but I think better of Oliver Cromwell’s amendment.—“_make the iron hot by striking it._”

6. Everything good needs time. Don’t do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way. _Time means power for your work._ Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.

7. _Be orderly._ Slatternly work is never good work. It is either affectation, or there is some radical defect in the intellect. I would distrust even the spiritual life of one whose methods and work were dirty, untidy, and without clearness and order.

8. Never be above your profession. I have had many letters from people who wanted all the emoluments and honors of literature, and who yet said, “Literature is the accident of my life; I am a lawyer, or a doctor, or a lady, or a gentleman.” _Literature is no accident. She is a mistress who demands the whole heart, the whole intellect, and the whole time of a devotee._

9. Don’t fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. _One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful_; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. _Above all things else, be cheerful_; there is no beatitude for the despairing.

Apparent success may be reached by sheer impudence, in defiance of offensive demerit. But men who get what they are manifestly unfit for, are made to feel what people think of them. Charlatanry may flourish; but when its bay tree is greenest, it is held far lower than genuine effort. The world is just; it may, it does, patronize quacks; but _it never puts them on a level with true men_.

It is better to have the opportunity of victory, than to be spared the struggle; for success comes but as the result of arduous experience. The foundations of my success were laid before I can well remember; _it was after at least forty-five years of conscious labor that I reached the object of my hope_. Many a time my head failed me, my hands failed me, my feet failed me, but, thank God, my _heart_ never failed me. Because _I knew that no extremity would find God’s arm shortened_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XIX

How Theodore Thomas Brought the People Nearer to Music

MR. THOMAS is an early riser, and as I found him one morning, in his chambers in Chicago, he was preparing to leave for rehearsal. The hale old gentleman actively paced the floor, while I conversed with him.

“Mr. Thomas,” I said, “those familiar with the events of your life consider them a lesson of encouragement for earnest and high-minded artists.”

“That is kind,” he answered.

“I should like, if you will, to have you speak of your work in building up your great orchestra in this country.”

“That is too long a story. I would have to begin with my birth.”

“Where were you born?” I asked.

“In the kingdom of Hanover, in 1835. My father was a violinist, and from him I inherited my taste, I suppose. He taught me music. When I was only six years old, I played the violin at public concerts.”

“I WAS NOT AN INFANT PRODIGY”

“I was not an infant prodigy, however. My father had too much wisdom to injure my chances in that way. He made me keep to my studies in a manner that did me good. I came to America in 1845.”

“Was the American music field crowded then?”

“On the contrary, there wasn’t any field to speak of. It had to be made. Music was the pastime of a few. The well-educated and fashionable classes possessed or claimed a knowledge of it. There was scarcely any music for the common people.”

“How did you get your start in the New York world of music?” I asked.

“With four associates, William Mason, Joseph Mosenthal, George Matzka and Frederick Berguer, I began a series of concerts of Chamber Music, and for many years we conducted this modest artistic enterprise. There was much musical enthusiasm on our part, but very little reward, except the pleasure we drew from our own playing.

“These Mason and Thomas _soirées_ are still remembered by old-time music lovers of New York, not only for their excellence, but for the peculiar character of the audiences. They were quiet little monthly reunions, to which most of the guests came with complimentary tickets. The critics hardly ventured to intrude upon the exercises, and the newspapers gave them little notice.”

BEGINNING OF THE ORCHESTRA

“How did you come to found your great orchestra?”

“It was more of a growth than a full-fledged thought to begin with. It was in 1861 that I severed my connection with the opera and began to establish a genuine orchestra. I began with occasional performances, popular matinée concerts, and so on, and, in a few years, was able to give a series of Symphony _Soirées_ at the old Irving Hall in New York.”

To the average person this work of Mr. Thomas may seem to be neither difficult nor great. Yet while anyone could have collected a band in a week, to make such an orchestra as Mr. Thomas meant to have, required time and patience. It was when the Philharmonic Society, after living through a great many hardships, was on the full tide of popular favor. Its concerts and rehearsals filled the Academy of Music with the flower of New York society. Powerful social influences had been won to its support, and Carl Bergmann had raised its noble orchestra of one hundred performers to a point of proficiency then quite unexampled in this country, and in some particulars still unsurpassed. Ladies and gentlemen who moved in the best circles hardly noticed the parallel entertainment offered in such a modest way, by Mr. Thomas, on the opposite side of the street. The patrons of his Chamber Concerts, of course, went in to see what the new orchestra was like; professional musicians hurried to the hall with their free passes; and there were a few curious listeners besides who found in the programmes a class of compositions somewhat different from those which Mr. Bergmann chiefly favored, and, in particular, a freshness and novelty in the selections, with an inclination, not yet very strongly marked, toward the modern German school. Among such of the _dilettanti_ as condescended to think of Mr. Thomas at all, there was a vague impression that his concerts were started in opposition to the Philharmonic Society, but that they were not so good and much less genteel.

It is true that Mr. Thomas was surpassed, at that time, by Mr. Bergmann’s larger and older orchestra, and that he had much less than an equal share of public favor, but there was no intentional rivalry. The two men had entirely different ideas and worked them out in perfectly original ways. It was only the artist’s dismal period of struggle and neglect, which every beginner must pass through. He had to meet cold and meager audiences, and the false judgment of both the critics and the people. Yet he was a singular compound of good American energy and German obstinacy, and he never lost courage.

“Was it a long struggle?” I asked.

“Not very long. Matters soon began to mend. The orchestra improved, the dreadful gaps in the audience soon filled up, and at the end of the year the Symphony _Soirées_, if they made no excitement in musical circles, had at least achieved a high reputation.”

“What was your aim, at that time?”

“When I began, I was convinced that there is no music too high for the popular appreciation,—that no scientific education is required for the enjoyment of Beethoven. I believed that it is only necessary that a public whose taste has been vitiated by over-indulgence in trifles, should have time and opportunity to accustom itself to better things. The American people at large then (1864) knew little or nothing of the great composers for the orchestra. Three or four more or less complete organizations had visited the principal cities of the United States in former years, but they made little permanent impression. Juillien had brought over, for his monster concerts, only five or six solo players, and the band was filled up with such material as he found here. The celebrated Germania Band of New York, which had first brought Mr. Bergmann (famous then as the head of the New York Philharmonic Society) into notice, did some admirable work just previous to my start in New York, but it disbanded after six years of vicissitude, and, besides, it was not a complete orchestra.”

“You mean,” I said, as Mr. Thomas paused meditatively, “that you came at a time when there was a decided opportunity?”

MUSIC HAD NO HOLD ON THE MASSES

“Yes. There had been, and were then, good organizations, such as the New York Philharmonic Society and the Harvard Musical Association in Boston, and a few similar organizations in various parts of the country. I mean no disparagement to their honorable labors, but, in simple truth, none of them had great influence on the masses. They were pioneers of culture. They prepared the way for the modern permanent orchestra.”

“They were not important?”

“No, no; that cannot be said. It would be the grossest ingratitude to forget what they did and have done and are still doing, or detract in the smallest degree from their well-earned fame. But from the very nature of their organization, it was inevitable that they should stand a little apart from the common crowd. To the general public, their performances were more like mysterious rites, celebrated behind closed doors, in the presence of a select and unchanging company of believers. Year after year, the same twenty-five hundred people filled the New York Academy of Music at the Philharmonic concerts, applauding the same class of master works, and growing more and more familiar with the same standards of the strictly classical school. This was no cause for complaint; on the contrary, it was most fortunate that the reverence for the older forms of art and canons of taste were thus kept alive; and we know that, little by little, the culture which the Philharmonic Society diffuses, through the circle of its regular subscribers, spreads beyond that small company, and raises the æsthetic tone of metropolitan life. But I believed then, as I believe now, that it would require generations for this little leaven to leaven the whole mass, and so I undertook to do my part in improving matters by forming an orchestra.”

“You wanted to get nearer the people with good music?”

“No, I wanted the people to get nearer to music. I was satisfied that the right course is to begin at the bottom instead of the top, and make the cultivation of symphonic music a popular movement.”

“Was the idea of a popular permanent orchestra new at that time?”

“Yes.”

“Why was it necessary to effect a permanent orchestra?”

“Why? Because the first step in making music popular was to raise the standard of orchestral performances and increase their frequency. Our country had never possessed a genuine orchestra, for a band of players gathered together at rare intervals for a special purpose does not deserve the name. The musician who marches at the head of a target company all the morning and plays for a dancing party at night, is out of tune with the great masters. To express the deep emotions of Beethoven, the romanticism of Schumann, or the poetry of Liszt, he ought to live in an atmosphere of art, and keep not only his hand in practice, but his mind properly attempered. An orchestra, therefore, ought to be a permanent body, whose members play together every day, under the same conductor, and devote themselves exclusively to genuine music. Nobody had yet attempted to found an orchestra of this kind in America when I began; but I believed it could be done.”

WORKING OUT HIS IDEA

“Did you have an idea of a permanent building for your orchestra?”

“Yes. I wanted something more than an ordinary concert-room. The idea needed it. It was to be a place suitable for use at all seasons of the year. There was to be communication in summer with an open garden, and in winter it was to be a perfect auditorium.”

Mr. Thomas’s idea went even further. It must be bright, comfortable, roomy, well ventilated—for a close and drowsy atmosphere is fatal to symphonic music,—it must offer to the multitude every attraction not inconsistent with musical enjoyment. The stage must be adapted for a variety of performances, for popular summer entertainment as well as the most serious of classical concerts. There, with an uninterrupted course of entertainments, night after night, the whole year round, the noblest work of all the great masters might be worthily presented.

The scheme was never wholly worked out in New York, great as Mr. Thomas’s fame became, but it was partially realized in the old Exposition building in Chicago, where he afterwards gave his summer concerts, and it is still nearer reality in the present permanent Chicago orchestra, which has the great Auditorium for its home and a $50,000 annual guarantee.

“What were your first steps in this direction?” I asked.

“I began with a series of _al fresco_ entertainments in the old Terrace Garden, in June, 1866. They were well patronized; and repeated in 1867. Then, in 1868, we removed to better quarters in Central Park Garden, and things prospered, so that, in 1869, I began those annual tours, which are now so common.”

The first itinerary of this kind was not very profitable, but the young conductor fought through it. Each new season improved somewhat, but there were troubles and losses. More than once, the travelers trod close upon the heels of calamity. The cost of moving from place to place was so great that the most careful management was necessary to cover expenses. They could not afford to be idle, even for a night, and the towns capable of furnishing good audiences generally wanted fun. Hence they must travel all day, and Thomas took care that the road should be smoothed with all obtainable comforts. Special cars on the railways, special attendants to look after the luggage, and lodgings at the best hotels contributed to make the tour tolerably pleasant and easy, so that the men came to their evening work fresh and smiling. They were tied up by freshets and delayed by wrecks; but their fame grew, and the audiences became greater. Thomas’s fame as a conductor who could guarantee constant employment permitted him to take his choice of the best players in the country, and he brought over a number of European celebrities as the public taste improved.

Theodore Thomas did another wise thing. He treated New York like a provincial city, giving it a week of music once in a while as he passed through it on his travels. This excited the popular interest, and when he came to stay, the next season, a brilliantly successful series of concerts was the result. At the close, a number of his admirers united in presenting him a rich silver casket, holding a purse of thirty-five hundred dollars, as a testimonial of gratitude for his services. The Brooklyn Philharmonic Society placed itself under his direction. Chicago gave him a fine invitation to attend benefit entertainments to himself; and, when he came, decked the hall with abundant natural flowers, as if for the reception of a hero. He was successful financially and every other way, and from that time on he merely added to his laurels.

THE CHIEF ELEMENT OF HIS SUCCESS

“What,” I asked of him, “do you consider the chief element of your success?”

“That is difficult to say. Perseverance, hard work, stern discipline,—each had its part.”

“You have never attempted to become rich?”

“Poh!”

“Do you still believe in the best music for the mass of the people?”

“I do. My success has been with them. It was so in New York; it is so here in Chicago.”

“Do you still work as hard as ever?” I inquired.

“Nearly so. The training of a large orchestra never ends. The work must be gone over and over. There is always something new.”

“And your life’s pleasure lies in this?”

“Wholly so. To render perfect music perfectly—that is enough.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XX

John Burroughs at Home: The Hut on the Hill Top

WHEN I visited the hill-top retreat of John Burroughs, the distinguished writer upon nature, at West Park, New York, it was with the feeling that all success is not material; that mere dollars are nothing, and that the influential man is the successful man, whether he be rich or poor. John Burroughs is unquestionably both influential and poor. Relatively poor: being an owner of some real estate, and having a modest income from copyrights. He is content: knowing when he has enough. On the wooden porch of his little bark-covered cabin I waited, one June afternoon, until he should come back from the woods and fields, where he had gone for a ramble. It was so still that the sound of my rocker moving to and fro on the rough boards of the little porch seemed to shock the perfect quiet. From afar off came the plaintive cry of a wood-dove, and then all was still again. Presently the interpreter of out-door life appeared in the distance, and, seeing a stranger at his door, hurried homeward. He was without coat or vest and looked cool in his white outing shirt and large straw hat. After some formalities of introduction we reached the subject which I had called to discuss, and he said:—

“It is not customary to interview men of my vocation concerning success.”

“Any one who has made a lasting impression on the minds of his contemporaries,” I began, “and influenced men and women—”

“Do you refer to me?” he interrupted, naïvely.

I nodded and he laughed. “I have not endowed a university nor made a fortune, nor conquered an enemy in battle,” he said.

“And those who have done such things have not written ‘Locusts and Wild Honey’ and ‘Wake-Robin.’”

“I recognize,” he said quietly, “that success is not always where people think it is. There are many ways of being successful; and I do not approve of the mistake which causes many to consider that a great fortune acquired means a great success achieved. On the contrary, our greatest men need very little money to accomplish the greatest work.”

“I thought that anyone leading a life so wholly at variance with the ordinary ideas and customs would see success in life from a different point of view,” I observed. “Money is really no object with you?”

“The subject of wealth never disturbs me.”

“You lead a very simple life here.”

“Such as you see.”

The sight would impress anyone. So far is this disciple of nature away from the ordinary mode of the world, that his little cabin, set in the cup-shaped top of a hill, is practically bare of luxuries and the so-called comforts of life. His surroundings are of the rudest, the very rocks and bushes encroaching upon his back door. All about, the crest of the hill encircles him, and shuts out the world. Only the birds of the air venture to invade his retreat from the various sides of the mountain; and there is only one approach by a straggling, narrow path. In his house are no decorations but such as can be hung upon the exposed wood. The fireplace is of brick, and quite wide; the floor, rough boards scrubbed white; the ceiling, a rough array of exposed rafters; and his bed rudely constructed. Very few and very simple chairs, a plain table and some shelves for books make the wealth of the retreat and serve for his ordinary use.[9]

Footnote 9:

This hut on the hill-top is situated in an old lake bed, some three
hundred yards wide, half filled with peat and decomposed matter,
swampy and overgrown. This area was devoted by Mr. Burroughs to the
raising of celery for the market, when he set out to earn a living
upon the land.

“Many people,” I said, “think that your method of living is an ideal example of the way people ought to live.”

“There is nothing remarkable in that. A great many people are very weary of the way they think themselves compelled to live. They are mistaken in believing that the disagreeable things they find themselves doing, are the things they ought to do. A great many take their ideas of a proper aim in life from what other people say and do. Consequently, they are unhappy, and an independent existence such as mine strikes them as ideal. As a matter of fact, it is very natural.”

“Would you say that to work so as to be able to live like this should be the aim of a young man?”

“By no means. On the contrary, his aim should be to live in such a way as will give his mind the greatest freedom and peace. This can be very often obtained by wanting less of material things and more of intellectual ones. A man who achieved such an aim would be as well off as the most distinguished man in any field. Money-getting is half a mania, and some other ‘getting’ propensities are manias also. The man who gets content comes nearest to being reasonable.”

“I should like,” I said, “to illustrate your point of view from the details of your own life.”

“Students of nature do not, as a rule, have eventful lives. I was born at Roxbury, New York, in 1837. That was a time when conditions were rather primitive. My father was a farmer, and I was raised among the woods and fields. I came from an uncultivated, unreading class of society, and grew up among surroundings the least calculated to awaken the literary faculty. I have no doubt that daily contact with the woods and fields awakened my interest in the wonders of nature, and gave me a bent toward investigation in that direction.”[10]

Footnote 10:

“Blessed is he whose youth was passed upon a farm,” writes Mr.
Burroughs; “and if it was a dairy farm his memories will be all the
more fragrant. The driving of the cows to and from the pasture every
day and every season for years,—how much of summer and of nature he
got into him on these journeys! What rambles and excursions did this
errand furnish the excuse for! The birds and birds’ nests, the
berries, the squirrels, the woodchucks, the beech woods into which the
cows loved so to wander and browse, the fragrant wintergreens, and a
hundred nameless adventures, all strung upon that brief journey of
half a mile to and from the remote pasture.”

“Did you begin early to make notes and write upon nature?” I questioned.

“Not before I was sixteen or seventeen. Earlier than that, the art of composition had anything but charms for me. I remember that while at school, at the age of fourteen, I was required, like other students, to write ‘compositions’ at stated times, but I usually evaded the duty one way or another. On one occasion, I copied something from a comic almanac, and unblushingly handed it in as my own. But the teacher detected the fraud, and ordered me to produce a twelve-line composition before I left school. I remember I racked my brain in vain, and the short winter day was almost closing when Jay Gould, who sat in the seat behind me, wrote twelve lines of doggerel on his slate and passed it slyly over to me. I had so little taste for writing that I coolly copied that, and handed it in as my own.”

“You were friendly with Gould then?”

“Oh, yes, ‘chummy,’ they call it now. His father’s farm was only a little way from ours, and we were fast friends, going home together every night.”

“His view of life must have been considerably different from yours.”

“It was. I always looked upon success as being a matter of mind, not money; but Jay wanted the material appearances. I remember that once we had a wrestling match, and as we were about even in strength, we agreed to abide by certain rules,—taking what we called ‘holts’ in the beginning and not breaking them until one or the other was thrown. I kept to this in the struggle, but when Jay realized that he was in danger of losing the contest, he broke the ‘holt’ and threw me. When I remarked that he had broken his agreement, he only laughed and said, ‘I threw you, didn’t I?’ And to every objection I made, he made the same answer. The fact of having won was pleasing to him. It satisfied him, although it wouldn’t have contented me.”

“Did you ever talk over success in life with him?”

“Yes, quite often. He was bent on making money, and did considerable trading among us schoolboys,—sold me some of his books. I felt then that my view of life was more satisfactory to me than his would have been. I wanted to obtain a competence, and then devote myself to high thinking instead of to money-making.”[11]

Footnote 11:

An old schoolmate in the little red schoolhouse has said, that “John
and Jay were not like the other boys. They learned their lessons
easier; and at recess they looked on the games, but did not join in
them. John always knew where to find the largest trout; he could show
you birds’ nests, and name all the flowers. He was fond of reading,
and would walk five miles to borrow a book. Roxbury is proud of John
Burroughs. We celebrated ‘Burroughs Day’ instead of Arbor Day here
last spring, in the high school, in honor of him.”

“How did you plan to attain this end?”

“By study. I began in my sixteenth or seventeenth year to try to express myself on paper, and when, after I had left the country school, I attended the seminary at Ashland and at Cooperstown, I often received the highest marks in composition, though only standing about the average in general scholarship. My taste ran to essays, and I picked up the great works in that field at a bookstore, from time to time, and filled my mind with the essay idea. I bought the whole of Dr. Johnson’s works at a second-hand bookstore in New York, because, on looking into them I found his essays appeared to be solid literature, which I thought was just the thing. Almost my first literary attempts were moral reflections, somewhat in the Johnsonian style.”

“You were supporting yourself during these years?”

“I taught six months and ‘boarded round’ before I went to the seminary. That put fifty dollars into my pocket, and the fifty paid my way at the seminary.[12] Working on the farm, studying and teaching filled up the years until 1863, when I went to Washington and found employment in the Treasury Department.”

Footnote 12:

It was when he was attending the academy, that young Burroughs first
saw that wonderful being—a living author:—

“I distinctly remember with what emotion I gazed upon him,” he said,
“and followed him about in the twilight, keeping on the other side of
the street. He was of little account,—a man who had failed as a
lawyer, and then had written a history of Poland, which I have never
heard of since that time; but to me he was the embodiment of the
august spirit of authorship, and I looked upon him with more reverence
and enthusiasm than I had ever before looked upon any man with. I
cannot divine why I should have stood in such worshipful fear and awe
of this obscure individual, but I suppose it was the instinctive
tribute of a timid and imaginative youth to a power he was just
beginning to see,—or to feel,—the power of letters.”

“You were connected with the Treasury then?”[13]

Footnote 13:

“My first book, ‘Wake-Robin,’ was written while I was a government
clerk in Washington,” says Mr. Burroughs. “It enabled me to live over
again the days I had passed with the birds, and in the scenes of my
youth. I wrote the book while sitting at a desk in front of an iron
wall. I was the keeper of a vault in which many million of bank-notes
were stored. During my long periods of leisure, I took refuge in my
pen. How my mind reacted from the iron wall in front of me, and sought
solace in memories of the birds and of summer fields and woods.”

“Oh, yes; for nearly nine years. I left the department in 1872, to become receiver of a bank, and subsequently for several years I performed the work of a bank examiner. I considered it only as an opportunity to earn and save up a little money on which I could retire. I managed to do that, and came back to this region, where I bought a fruit farm. I worked that into paying condition, and then gave all my time to the pursuit of the studies I like.”

“Had you abandoned your interest in nature during your Washington life?”

“No. I gave as much time to the study of nature and literature as I had to spare. When I was twenty-three I wrote an essay on ‘Expression,’ and sent it to the ‘_Atlantic_.’ It was so Emersonian in style, owing to my enthusiasm for Emerson at that time, that the editor thought some one was trying to palm off on him an early essay of Emerson’s which he had not seen. He found that Emerson had not published any such paper, however, and printed it, though it had not much merit. I wrote off and on for the magazines.”

The editor in question was James Russell Lowell, who, instead of considering it without merit, often expressed afterwards the delight with which he read this contribution from an unknown hand, and the swift impression of the author’s future distinction which came to him with that reading.

“Your successful work, then, has been in what direction?” I said.

“In studying nature. It has all come by living close to the plants and animals of the woods and fields, and coming to understand them. There I have been successful. Men who, like myself, are deficient in self-assertion, or whose personalities are flexible and yielding, make a poor show in business, but in certain other fields these defects become advantages. Certainly it is so in my case. I can succeed with bird or beast, for I have cultivated my ability in that direction. I can look in the eye of an ugly dog or cow and win, but with an ugly man I have less success.

“I consider the desire which most individuals have for the luxuries which money can buy, an error of mind” he added. “Those things do not mean anything except a lack of higher tastes. Such wants are not necessary wants, nor honorable wants. If you cannot get wealth with a noble purpose, it is better to abandon it and get something else. Peace of mind is one of the best things to seek, and finer tastes and feelings. The man who gets these, and maintains himself comfortably, is much more admirable and successful than the man who gets money and neglects these. The realm of power has no fascination for me. I would rather have my seclusion and peace of mind. This log hut, with its bare floors, is sufficient. I am set down among the beauties of nature, and in no danger of losing the riches that are scattered all about. No one will take my walks or my brook away from me. The flowers, birds and animals are plentifully provided. I have enough to eat and wear, and time to see how beautiful the world is, and to enjoy it. The entire world is after your money, or the things you have bought with your money. It is trying to keep them that makes them seem so precious. I live to broaden and enjoy my own life, believing that in so doing I do what is best for everyone. If I ran after birds only to write about them, I should never have written anything that anyone else would have cared to read. I must write from sympathy and love,—that is, from enjoyment,—or not at all. I come gradually to have a feeling that I want to write upon a given theme. Whenever the subject recurs to me, it awakens a warm, personal response. My confidence that I ought to write comes from the feeling or attraction which some subjects exercise over me. The work is pleasure, and the result gives pleasure.”

“And your work as a naturalist is what?”

“Climbing trees to study birds, lying by the waterside to watch the fishes, sitting still in the grass for hours to study the insects, and tramping here and there, always to observe and study whatever is common to the woods and fields.”

“Men think you have done a great work,” I said.

“I have done a pleasant work,” he said, modestly.

“And the achievements of your schoolmate Gould do not appeal to you as having anything in them worth aiming for?” I questioned.

“Not for me. I think my life is better for having escaped such vast and difficult interests.”

The gentle, light-hearted naturalist and recluse came down the long hillside with me, “to put me right” on the main road. I watched him as he retraced his steps up the steep, dark path, lantern in hand. His sixty years sat lightly upon him, and as he ascended I heard him singing. Long after the light melody had died away, I saw the serene little light bobbing up and down in his hand, disappearing and reappearing, as the lone philosopher repaired to his hut and his couch of content.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XXI

Vreeland’s Romantic Story: How He Came to Transport a Million Passengers
a Day

A SHORT time ago, New York learned with interest and some astonishment, that the head of its greatest transportation system, Herbert H. Vreeland, had received from several of his associates as individuals, a “valentine” present of $100,000, in recognition of his superb management of their properties. Many New Yorkers then learned, for the first time, what railroad experts throughout the country had long known, that the transportation of a million people a day in New York’s busy streets, without serious friction or public annoyance, is not a matter of chance, but is the result of perhaps the most perfect traffic organization ever created, at the head of which is a man, quiet, forceful, able, with the ability of a great general—a master and at the same time, a friend of men,—himself one for whom in the judgment of his associates almost any higher railroad career is possible.

Thirty years ago Mr. Vreeland, then a lad thirteen years old, was, to use his own humorous, reminiscent phrase, “h’isting ice” on the Hudson River, one of a gang of eighteen or twenty men and boys filling the ice carts for retail city delivery. A picture just brought to light, shows him among the force lined up to be photographed, as a tall, loosely built, hatchet-faced lad in working garb, with a fragment of a smile on his face, as if he could appreciate the contrast of the boy of that day with the man of the future.

How do these things happen? What was the divine spark in this boy’s brain and heart that should lift him out of the crowd of the commonplace to the position of responsibility and influence in the world which he now occupies? If my readers could have been present at the interview kindly granted by Mr. Vreeland to the writer, and could have heard him recalling his early life and its many struggles and disappointments with a smile that was often near a tear, they would have gone away feeling that nothing is impossible to him who dares, and, above all else, who _works_, and they would have derived inspiration far greater than can possibly be given in these written words.

“I first entered the railroad business in 1875,” said Mr. Vreeland, “shoveling gravel on one of the Long Island Railroad Company’s night construction trains. Though this position was humble enough, it was a great thing to me then to feel myself a railroad man, with all that that term implied; and when, after a few months’ trial, I was given the job of inspecting ties and roadbed at a dollar a day, I felt that I was well on the road to the presidency.

“One day the superintendent asked my boss if he could give him a reliable man to replace a switchman who had just made a blunder leading to a collision, and had been discharged. The reply was, ‘Well, I’ve got a man named Vreeland here, who will do exactly what you tell him to.’ They called me up, and, after a few short, sharp questions from the train-master, I went down to the dreary and desolate marsh near Bushwick, Long Island, and took charge of a switch. For a few days I had to camp out near that switch, in any way that might happen, but finally the officers made up their minds that they could afford me the luxury of a two-by-four flag-house with a stove in it, and I settled down for more railroading.

“The Bushwick station was not far away, and one of the company’s division headquarters was there. I soon made the acquaintance of all the officials around that station, and got into their good graces by offering to help them out in their clerical work at any and all times when I was off duty. It was a godsend to them, and exactly what I wanted, for I had determined to get into the inside of the railroad business from bottom to top. Many’s the time I have worked till eleven or twelve o’clock at night in that little station, figuring out train receipts and expenses, engine cost and duty, and freight and passenger statistics of all kinds; and, as a result of this work, I quickly acquired a grasp of railroad details in all stages, which few managers possess, for, in one way and another, I got into and through every branch of the business.

“My Bushwick switch was a temporary one, put in for construction purposes only, and, after some months’ use, was discontinued, and I was discharged. This did not suit me at all, and I went to one of the officials of the road and told him that I wanted to remain with the Long Island Railroad Company in any capacity whatsoever, and would be obliged to him if he would give me a job. He said, at first, that he hadn’t a thing for me to do, but finally added, as if he was ashamed to suggest it, that, if I had a mind to go down on another division and sweep out and dust cars, I might do it. I instantly accepted, and thereby learned the details of another important railroad department.

“Pretty soon they made me brakeman on an early morning train to Hempstead, and then I found that I was worth to the world, after two years of railroad training, just forty dollars a month, _plus_ a perquisite or two obtained from running a card-table department in the smoking-cars. I remembered that I paid eighteen dollars of my munificent salary for board and lodging, sent twenty dollars home for the support of my mother and sister, and had two dollars a month and the aforesaid perquisites left for ‘luxuries.’

“It was about this time, thus early in my career, that I first came to be known as ‘President Vreeland.’ An old codger upon the railroad, in talking to me one day, said, in a bantering way: ‘Well, I suppose you think your fortune is made, now you have become a brakeman, but let me tell you what will happen. You will be a brakeman about four or five years, and then they will make you a conductor, at about one hundred dollars a month, and there you’ll stick all your life, if you don’t get discharged.’ I responded, rather angrily, ‘Do you suppose I am going to be satisfied with remaining a conductor? I mean to be president of a railroad.’ ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ laughed the man. He told the story around, and many a time thereafter the boys slyly placed the word ‘President’ before my name on official instructions and packages sent to me.

“A conductor on one of the regular trains quarreled one morning with the superintendent and was discharged. I was sent for and told to take out that train. This was jumping me over the heads of many of the older brakemen, and, as a consequence, all the brakemen on that train quit. Others were secured, however, and I ran the train regularly for a good many months.

“Then came an accident one day, for which the engineer and I were jointly responsible. We admitted our responsibility, and were discharged. I went again to the superintendent, however, and, upon a strong plea to be retained in the service, he sent me back to the ranks among the brakemen. I had no complaint to make, but accepted the consequence of my mistake.

“Soon after this, the control of the road passed into other hands. Many were discharged, and I was daily expecting my own ‘blue envelope.’ One day, I was detailed to act as brakeman on a special which was to convey the president and directors of the road, with invited guests, on a trip over the lines. By that time I had learned the Long Island Railroad in all its branches pretty well; and, in the course of the trip, was called upon to answer a great many questions. The next day I received word that the superintendent wanted to see me. My heart sank within me, for summonses of this kind were ominous in those days, but I duly presented myself at the office and was asked, ‘Are you the good-looking brakeman who was on the special yesterday who shows his teeth when he smiles?’ I modestly replied that I was certainly on the special yesterday, and I may possibly have partly confirmed the rest of the identification by a smile, for the superintendent, without further questioning, said: ‘The president wants to see you, up stairs.’

“I went up, and in due time was shown into the presence of the great man, who eyed me closely for a minute or two, and then asked me abruptly what I was doing. I told him I was braking Number Seventeen. He said: ‘Take this letter to your superintendent. It contains a request that he relieve you from duty, and put somebody else in your place. After he has done so, come back here.’

“All this I did, and, on my return to the president, he said, ‘Take this letter at once to Admiral Peyron, of the French fleet (then lying in the harbor on a visit of courtesy to this country), and this to General Hancock, on Governor’s Island. They contain invitations to each to dine with me to-morrow night at my home in Garden City with their staffs. Get their answers, and, if they say yes, return at once to New York, charter a steamer, call for them to-morrow afternoon, land them at Long Island City, arrange for a special train from Long Island City to Garden City, take them there, and return them after the banquet. I leave everything in your hands. Good day.’

“I suppose this might be considered a rather large job for a common brakeman, but I managed to get through with it without disgracing myself, and apparently to the satisfaction of all concerned. For some time thereafter, I was the president’s special emissary on similar matters connected with the general conduct of the business, and while I did not, perhaps, learn so very much about railroading proper, I was put in positions where I learned to take responsibility and came to have confidence in myself.

“The control of the Long Island Railroad again changed hands, and I was again ‘let out,’ this time for good, so far as that particular road was concerned,—except that, within the last two or three years, I have renewed my acquaintance with it through being commissioned by a banking syndicate in New York City to make an expert examination of its plant and equipment as a preliminary to reorganization.

“This was in 1881, or about that time, and I soon secured a position as conductor on the New York and Northern Railroad, a little line running from One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, New York City, to Yonkers. Not to go into tedious detail regarding my experience there, I may say in brief that in course of time I practically ‘ran the road.’ After some years, it changed hands (a thing which railways, particularly small ones, often do, and always to the great discomposure of the employees), and the new owners, including William C. Whitney, Daniel S. Lamont, Captain R. Somers Hayes and others, went over the road one day on a special train to visit the property. As I have said, I was then practically running the road, owing to the fact that the man who held the position of general manager was not a railroad man and relied upon me to handle all details, but my actual position was only that of train-master. I accompanied the party, and knowing the road thoroughly, not only physically but also statistically, was able to answer all the questions which they raised. This was the first time I had met Mr. Whitney, and I judge that I made a somewhat favorable impression upon him, for not long after I was created general manager of the road.

“A few months later, I received this telegram:—

‘H. H. VREELAND.

‘Meet me at Broadway and Seventh Avenue office at two o’clock
to-day.

WILLIAM C. WHITNEY.’

“I had to take a special engine to do this, but arrived at two o’clock at the office of the Houston Street, West Street and Pavonia Ferry Railroad Company, which I then knew, in an indistinct sort of way, owned a small horse railway in the heart of New York. After finding that Mr. Whitney was out at lunch, I kicked my heels for a few minutes outside the gate, and then inquired of a man who was seated inside in an exceedingly comfortable chair, when Mr. Whitney and his party were expected, saying, also, that my name was Vreeland, and I had an appointment at two. He replied: ‘Oh, are you Mr. Vreeland? Well, here is a letter for you. Mr. Whitney expected to be here at two o’clock, but is a little late.’ I took my letter and sat down again outside, thinking that it might possibly contain an appointment for another hour. It was, however, an appointment of quite a different character. It read as follows:—

‘MR. H. H. VREELAND.