UNDER THE MAPLES

THE LAST PORTRAIT OF JOHN BURROUGHS
(March 23, 1921; six days before his death)
Made at Pasadena Glen, California, by his long-timefriend Charles F. Lummis

UNDER THE MAPLES

BY
JOHN BURROUGHS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

v

PREFACE

It was while sitting in his hay-barn study in theCatskills and looking out upon the maple woods ofthe old home farm, and under the maples at Riverby,that the most of these essays were written,during the last two years of the author's life. And itwas to the familiar haunts near his Hudson Riverhome that his thoughts wistfully turned while winteringin Southern California in 1921. As he picturedin his mind the ice breaking up on the river in thecrystalline March days, the return of the birds, thefirst hepaticas, he longed to be back among them; hewas there in spirit, gazing upon the river from thesummer-house, or from the veranda of the Nest, orseated at his table in the chestnut-bark Study, orbusy with his sap-gathering and sugar-making.

Casting about for a title for this volume, thevision of maple-trees and dripping sap and crispMarch days playing constantly before his mind,one day while sorting and shifting the essays for hisnew book, he suddenly said, "I have it! We'll callit Under the Maples!"

His love for the maple, and consequently hispleasure in having hit upon this title, can be gatheredfrom the following fragment found among hismiscellaneous notes: "I always feel at home wherevithe sugar maple grows It was paramount in thewoods of the old home farm where I grew up. Itlooks and smells like home. When I bring in a maplestick to put on my fire, I feel like caressing it alittle. Its fiber is as white as a lily, and nearly assweet-scented. It is such a tractable, satisfactorywood to handle—a clean, docile, wholesome tree;burning without snapping or sputtering, easilyworked up into stovewood, fine of grain, hard oftexture, stately as a forest tree, comely and clean asa shade tree, glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolnessin summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage,warmth in its fibers, and health in it the yearround."

Clara Barrus

The Nest at Riverby
West Park on the Hudson
New York

vii

CONTENTS