BOOKS and AUTHORS

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 1164, 3 November 1917, Page 7 (Supplement)

BOOKS and AUTHORS

TT " W> D - Howclls > Jolin Burroughs { sQ)£ * s now * ne Grand Old Man of American letters. Though already ne rc ' :uns J, B his mental vigour, «hlsii7/ll! anc ' nas sumc i cnt remaining physical vitality to go motor caravaning with Edison and Henry Ford. Here is his recollection of Emerson, with a memory of Whitman, from an informal talk before the strange trio set out:— Though I was little more than a boy, I had worshipped him so long that my first meeting with Emerson momentarily turned my head. I was visiting near West Point and went up to look at the Academy. The boys were having examinations at the time, arid I saw a group of dignitaries there who had been invited to witness or overlook or lend an air of ceremony to the examinations, something purely formal, 1 suppose. They were looking very wise, but not particularly interested —all but one. He attracted my attention at once. "Hello," thought I. "Here's a queer Dick!" He was a tail,' handsome chap, with a stove-pipe hat pushed back u .fl his head, and he seemed as alert and interested in everything as the others were indifferent. I did not know who he was at the time, or, I suppose, I would have dogged his heels. But that night a friend fold me, "Emerson's up at the Academy!" "Then I saw him!" I cried. 1 could hardly wait for the next day to come. My friend knew Emerson, and I dragged him up to the Academy, where he introduced me to the "queer Dick." Emerson seemed glad to escape from the others, for he walked off with us two and talked all the time. He talked divinely! He talked all the way down to the ferry, and he talked even after the boat moved off. We could not hear him then, but we could see his animated face and almost understood every word from that. Why we did not go along on the boat, I don't know, because we both literally worshipped him. I suppose we didn't have the boat fare. "A Plucked Eagle." The next time I met him at one of his Lovers Lab©Mr Lost HE "story is of maiden Hinemoa." sg£flßSjsw Indubitably, too, it's a story for verse. But it's just a little rough on "Who swam to join her love on Beguiled by music's tender witchy wile," to announce that when a slave appeared at the pool she "Bold nullified Tutanekai's behest," bringing the chieftain himself to the spring, "T :, probe the which his trembling slave so feared"? And when we are breathlessly following a moa, ". ... . his huge torse Upbreasling high the gale o'er tussocked plain," is it find to land us in a patch of raupo. "Bristling its brown defying passing years"? Even when the clouds bless us "With supererogation's loveliness," beauty plays us the shabby trick of "lifting the soul to strain its fleshy ramparts." However, Ave are bound to confess that we awoke suddenly at one stage to the fact that we were dreaming of "Hiawatha," and a moment later switched unaccountably to Chapman's Homer. There must be magic somewhere. . . . And there is. "Hinemoa" has a perfect sincerity, and its author, we we have no manner of doubt at all a much more becoming reverence for the things that count than the callous contributor of these hasty lines. (Messrs Whitcombe & Tombs, Ltd.).

lectures, where I'was again introduced to him, this time by Walt Whitman. Emerson remembered me. "I have your book, 'Wake Robin,' on my desk," he said. "Splendid title! Splendid!" But I noticed—here Mr Burroughs chuckled—that he said nothing about the contents. The last time I met him was at "a dinner given by the "Atlantic Monthly" to its contributors in honour of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Emerson was an old man then. I sat where I could see him. He looked like a plucked eagle. His chin and his nose met—you know he had a good aquiline nose. He said very little, but seemed interested in everything that was going on. Later, in the reception room, I was taken over to him. But his memory had to fail him. He did not remember me. Whittier called out, "Thee knows him! Thee knows him!" But that did not help Emerson. He looked about and saw his friend Sanborn passing. He wanted to call him to help place me, but had forgotten Sanborn's name. His mind was like a bridge with one span gone. He couldn't get quite across. So he reached out one long arm and caught Sanborn.

Bwroughs Recalls the Sage of Sleepy Hollow

But throughout it all he retained a fine serenity that seemed a kind of grandein, that seemed to say, "What do these things matter?" It struck me what a feat of personality :>"d intellectual affinity it was for a man to link two such spirits as Emerson and Walt Whitman. I remarked on the strong contrast between the two men. Mr Burroughs spoke of Whitman as enthusiastically as he had of Emerson. No matter, how kindly Emerson felt towards you, he always kept you at a distance. His reserve Mas both reasoned and temperamental, I think. It was all the other way with Whitman. He embraced you, body and spirit. And you felt the same toward him. I remember the day when he and I stood together on a street corner in Washington while General Burnside's men marched past us, a river of blue, on their wav to join Grant in the last year of the Civil War. Whitman was, as usual, radiantly clean, as though he had just come from the bath. His clothes were immaculate; there was a (lower in his button hole; his beard snow while, his checks a clear pink, his blue eyes glowing. The Great "Mother Man." Suddenly a soldier"whom Walt had nursed in some hospital would spy him, cry out his name, and, breaking from the ranks, would come running over to him, throw his arms about him, and kiss him. Then he would drag Whitman off to march with him for a distance until Walt would finally break away and come back, only to have another soldier spy him and embrace hini and drag him off in the same way. That kept up almost all the time. As for Whitman, he just radiated love. He was the great Mother Man. I've seen him hold a dying soldier's hand in a hospital when he could do nothing else for him, and it seemed to be a great comfort to the poor fellow. Whitman's magnificent vitality and his great love seemed to How through that touch of his hand. It was as though some beloved kinsman were holding the poor chap's hand instead of a man who was a stranger to him up to a few minutes before. And the men meant as much to Whitman. He used to get my wife to bake whole piles of crullers and mince pies and pumpkin pies to take to some wounded soldiers who hadn't tasted a bit of New England so long that they ached with homesickness. And the pleasure on Whitman's face as he watched them eat!