Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers | Page 5

over letters. His work, which has long found ready acceptance
both at home and abroad, is now passing into that security of fame
which comes from its entrance into the school-life of American
children.
Besides his outdoor sketches and the other papers already mentioned,
Mr. Burroughs has written a number of critical essays on life and
literature, published in Indoor Studies, and other volumes. He has a1so
taken his readers into his confidence in An Egotistical Chapter, the
final one of his Indoor Studies; and in the Introduction to the Riverside
Edition of his writings he has given us further glimpses of his private
intellectual life.
Probably no other American writer has a greater sympathy with, and a
keener enjoyment of, country life in all its phases--farming, camping,
fishing, walking--than has John Burroughs. His books are redolent of
the soil, and have such "freshness and primal sweetness," that we need
not be told that the pleasure he gets from his walks and excursions is by

no means over when he steps inside his doors again. As he tells us on
more than one occasion, he finds he can get much more out of his
outdoor experiences by thinking them over, and writing them out
afterwards.
Numbers 28, 36, and 92 of the Riverside Literature Series consist of
selections from Mr. Burroughs's books. No. 28, which is entitled Birds
and Bees, is made up of Bird Enemies and The Tragedies of the Nests
from the volume Signs and Seasons, An Idyl of the Honey-Bee from
Pepacton, and The Pastoral Bees from Locusts and Wild Honey. The
Introduction, by Miss Mary E. Burt, gives an account of the use of Mr.
Burroughs's writings in Chicago schools.
In No. 36, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers, the initial paper, Sharp Eyes,
is drawn from Locusts and Wild Honey, The Apple comes from Winter
Sunshine, A Taste of Maine Birch and Winter Neighbors from Signs
and Seasons, and Notes by the Way (on muskrats, squirrels, foxes, and
woodchucks) from Pepacton.
The collection called A Bunch of Herbs, and Other Papers, forming No.
92 of the Series, was designed with special reference to what the author
has to say of trees and flowers, and contains A Bunch of Herbs from
Pepacton, Strawberries from Locusts and Wild Honey, A March
Chronicle and Autumn Tides from Winter Sunshine, A Spray of Pine
and A Spring Relish from Signs and Seasons, and English Woods: A
Contrast from Fresh Fields.

INTRODUCTION.

It is seldom that I find a book so far above children that I cannot share
its best thought with them. So when I first took up one of John
Burroughs's essays, I at once foresaw many a ramble with my pupils
through the enchanted country that is found within its breezy pages. To
read John Burroughs is to live in the woods and fields, and to associate
intimately with all their little timid inhabitants; to learn that--
"God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear, To
give sign, we and they are his children, one family here."
When I came to use Pepacton in my class of the sixth grade, I soon
found, not only that the children read better but that they came rapidly
to a better appreciation of the finer bits of literature in their regular

readers, while their interest in their new author grew quickly to an
enthusiasm. Never was a little brother or sister more real to them than
was "Peggy Mel" as she rushed into the hive laden with stolen honey,
while her neighbors gossiped about it, or the stately elm that played sly
tricks, or the log which proved to be a good bedfellow because it did
not grumble. Burroughs's way of investing beasts, birds, insects, and
inanimate things with human motives is very pleasing to children. They
like to trace analogies between the human and the irrational, to think of
a weed as a tramp stealing rides, of Nature as a tell-tale when taken by
surprise.
The quiet enthusiasm of John Burroughs's essays is much healthier than
the over-wrought dramatic action which sets all the nerves a-quiver,
--nerves already stimulated to excess by the comedies and tragedies
forced upon the daily lives of children. It is especially true of children
living in crowded cities, shut away from the woods and hills, constant
witnesses of the effects of human passion, that they need the tonic of a
quiet literature rather than the stimulant of a stormy or dramatic one,--a
literature which develops gentle feelings, deep thought, and a relish for
what is homely and homespun, rather than a literature which calls forth
excited feelings.
The essays in this volume are those in which my pupils have expressed
an enthusiastic interest, or which, after careful reading, I have