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Show NOTED NATURE STUDENT DIES 01 IY DDI John Burroughs Gained ! World-wide Fame From His Books WRITINGS CHEERFUL Commercial Career as Clerk of Treasury and Bank Examiner UTIC. N Y. March 29 John P.urroughs. naturalist, died on a New York Central train near KlngSvUle, Ohio, on bir way home from California jat 2 o'clock this morning. Hs had I been very ill for six weeks with an abscess on the chest and heart and With kidney complications. He wns so eager to get home tbnt Uhe long Journey was undertaken with jthc hope that he could survive. The ond eamo suddenly, a few minutes aft- I I r be had nskod ! "How near home are- we'" I His physician. Dr. Clara Barrus. his 'granddaughter. Ursula Burroughs and !the Misses Fleanor and Harriet Bur-' Bur-' roughs accompanied him on the journey. jour-ney. s i DDENT OF N Tl RE John Rurroughs was the venerable dean of nature-writers In the United States. Through a score of books ht 'shared with countless readers his lifelong life-long Intimacy with birds, bees flowers flow-ers and the whole out-of-doors. His 'highly developed powers of observation observa-tion and the charm of his Interpreta-1 Interpreta-1 ttons were the marvel of his critics His flowing white beard, his kindly) Imeln. his whole habit of life, and his j literary stvle wer - rather reminiscent I of that famous New England school of .essayists a generation or two before him. His earliest writing, on "expression" "ex-pression" was at one time widely mls- taken for the work of Bmerson, a close reader of whom Rurroughs had 1 been from youth. Ills later works on nature suggested something of Thor-1 eau. but. as critics said Burroughs was the more soclablo writer HE l ED N M 1 HE Ho learned to love- nature when he drove cows at his birthplace farm. Roxbury, among the CatsklllS, in New York State, but anything like a literary liter-ary composition was a bugbear to him BS a outh. The story Is told of how when ho was fourteen, in common With the members of his class at school, he was required to write twelve lines of original composition He copied cop-ied something out of a comic almanac. His theft was detected. Again In desperation des-peration upon his second trial he paid ; Jav Gould his class mate, sixty cents! tor a twelve line verse which he handed hand-ed in as his own. WORKS T CAPITAL. He was born in 1837 In 1863 he wfnt to Washington with something Of an Inclination to enlist In the Union j army, but ho decided to seek a government gov-ernment office It Is related that I with only a few of his poems as ere-Idontials ere-Idontials he walked Into tho treasury j department and asked for a Job. It was agreed that his ornal verses real-ly real-ly smelt of the woods, and smacked of sincerity. Ho would be a safe man to watch the treasury vaults. He agreed to take the place At a little desk, facing the huge Iron vault where he kept tabs on those who went to i handle the SiO.OOO OOu stored there, he began writing of the birds, to relieve bis homesickness The result was his first book. "Wake-Robin." BUILDS His CABIN. Some years later, after work as a treasury clerk and a national bank examiner ex-aminer had netted him some savings, he bought a few acres at West Park on the Hudson, where among the ! loaded tre llises of B Vineyard ho found '.'more pleasure than in the closets of greenbacks." There he renewed his emotional Intercourse with nature I bulldlnz a real house overlooking the jrier Just above Poughkeepsle. When .rural civilization pressed a little close about him. he built his "Slabsides" l cabin a mile or two back In the woods. He did not go at his studies with the set determination of an herbalist, but jtook life, easily, and wrote breezily when the. spirit moved him of the see-IretS see-IretS of nature, lie never made much lof tho discovery of new species, and 'nothing of cataloguing them but delighted de-lighted in finding for himself and revealing re-vealing to others the charms of close contact with the birds, bees and flowers- Tho essence of his philosophy was Browning, that "All's well with the world." SOME I" His BOOKS- Tho titles of his books included Winter Sunshine, "Locusts and Wild Honey. "Fresh Fields," "Indoor Studies." Stu-dies." Hilda and Poets," "Signs and Seasons," "Tho Light of Day Rellg-. ions Discussions from the Standpoint of the Naturalist. Llterar Values." and "Ways of Nature "He was a friend of Walt Whitman and one of his books was an appreciation of him Ho was also a boon companion of Theodore Roosevelt in nature studies. During 'Col. Roosevelt's occasional clashes with "nature fakers" and those who churned him with brutal instincts In his hunting trips, the Venerable Burroughs Bur-roughs always cams to the Colonel's defense With John Muir. the nutur-allst nutur-allst of tho West, Burroughs once toured the canyons and collaborated with Muir In a Study of Our National Nation-al Parks." WRITER GROWS 01 i "Rlverby" and "SlabSldes," Burroughs' Bur-roughs' retreats on the Hudson, became be-came shrines for his many admirers, land those who made pilgrimages there I Wars iu-xLiUb received in the most 'democratic fashion by the celebrated naturalist. of his 75th birthday he said. "Growing "Grow-ing old is a kind of letting go. The morning has Its delights and Its en-Ueementa en-Ueementa "lP noon has Its triumphs and satisfactions, but there are a charm and a tranquility and a spiritual spirit-ual uplift about the close of that day that belong to neither. |