harmless barking, when I am angered, I get from him. The Kellys are
more apt to bite. I see myself, too, in my brothers, in their looks
and especially in their weaknesses. Take from me my special
intellectual equipment, and I am in all else one of them.


[Speaking of their characteristics as a family, Mr. Burroughs says
that they have absolute inability to harbor resentment (a Celtic
trait); that they never have "cheek" to ask enough for what they
have to sell, lack decision, and are easily turned from their
purpose. Commenting on this, he has often said: "We are weak as
men--do not make ourselves felt in the community. But this very
weakness is a help to me as a writer upon Nature. I don't stand in
my own light. I get very close to bird and beast. My thin skin
lets the shy and delicate influences pass. I can surrender myself
to Nature without effort. I am like her. . . . That which hinders
me with men, makes me strong with impersonal Nature, and admits me
to her influences. . . . I am lacking in moral fibre, but am tender
and sympathetic."]


To see Mr. Burroughs stand and fondly gaze upon the fruitful,
well-cultivated fields that his father had cared for so many years,
to hear him say that the hills are like father and mother to him,
was to realize how strong is the filial instinct in him--that and
the home feeling. As he stood on the crest of the big hill by the
pennyroyal rock, looking down on the peaceful homestead in the
soft light of a midsummer afternoon, his eye roamed fondly over
the scene:--