lands; and beyond all the blue curve of the Catskills. Then I come back refreshed. At this point, Hiram, homeless and poor, came to Riverby hoping to settle down there; but his presence, as obnoxious to Mrs. Burroughs as it was welcome to his brother, caused the latter to cast about as to how he could provide a home for Hiram, and also indulge his ingrained hospitality toward other friends without burdening his wife with the cares which such hospitality would entail. Thus the rustic retreat began to take shape in his thoughts, and, not long after, by the swamp itself. The first mention of the cabin in the Journal is on November 25th, when, after a jaunt to New York, he records, 'Home today and at work on the house in the woods.' His frank pleasure at his success in speaking in public is seen in a preceding entry: This day I speak to the girls at Packer Institute - a large hall, a large audience. I speak on the Art of Seeing Things with marked success. My first real success on the platform. I am tickled with myself. I find the large audience, the large hall, like swimming in deep water; 'tis very easy. Had I been told beforehand what was before me, I should never have dared to undertake it. Mr. Proctor was enthusiastic; said no speaker since Curtis had so pleased a Brooklyn audience. We were just the opposite, he said: Curtis's was Art, mine was Nature. I told him I was a green-horn. 'Then remain a green-horn all your life,' said he. In the morning I go with Chubb to the High school and speak to the boys, in the evening to a Whitman dinner, where I speak again, but not with much fulness or go — am not well prepared. . . . Saturday. Stayed with Proctor last night and heard the nightingale. It sang well, he said, but did not fully let itself out like the wild bird. Its song is a brilliant medley, no theme that I could detect, like the lark's song. All the notes of the field and forest the gift of this bird; but I cannot judge its song till I hear it in nature where it belongs. Sunday.... Go to Plymouth church and hear [Lyman] Abbott. Eloquence a little perfunctory, a little of the sin of which most preachers have so much, and whereof 'a little more than a little is by much too much.' Why not speak naturally and just as you feel? Why be moved until your theme moves you? Let a man be eloquent when he can't help it. Yet Abbott is a fine preacher, and a liberal, growing man. Before the Women's University Club also he speaks, but a few days later he is absorbed in rapidly pushing up the stone chimney of his cabin, with the help of a stone-mason, and is 'happy all the day long.' They finished the chimney the day before Christmas. The next day 'the boys' from Poughkeepsie picnicked with him in the cabin, 'the boys' being a group of friends, of which Mr. Edmund Platt was one, who came often thereafter to the woodland retreat. The little bark-covered cabin had not yet received its expressive name, but Slab Rest, Foot Cliffs, Crag's Foot, Rock Haven, Whippoorwill's Nest, Coon Hollow, and Echo Lodge were, in turn, tried out as the shelter neared completion. While the various names were being tested, he sent this bit of fooling to a metropolitan friend: I have been building me a retreat over by the muck-swamp, to be called Echo Castle. My plan was to kidnap you and fetch you here of a dark stormy night and imprison you, and keep you from New York for a whole year, and make you well again with love and tenderness, and so lay the foundation of a beautiful legend that would in time greatly enhance the value of my wild possessions; but now you have relented and written to me, and asked me down, I shall postpone the execution of my audacious plan awhile. Maybe I can inveigle you up here without resort to force. I am sorry you are not well, and I shall not easily forgive you. I keep pretty well, and expect to till the end. A neighbor, Mrs. William van Benschoten, suggested the name 'Slabsides,' and on January 28th it is first called by that name in the Journal. The muck-swamp and the rustic cabin lie in a depression of the hills behind West-Park-on-the-Hudson. The place is reached by going west from the railway station for perhaps half a mile along the country road, then turning to the left into the woods for a mile more. Traversing the rough, winding road through the woods, one comes rather unexpectedly upon the little slab-covered house a bit of human handiwork tucked away in that rock-girt basin. There it nestles in the clearing, vine-covered, rude and substantial without, snug and comfortable within. Celery and lettuce in the black soil give a welcome touch of domesticity to savage nature roundabout! Visitors to the cabin may recall these lines of Charles Cotton, which the Seer of Slabsides was wont to quote contentedly: Good God! how sweet are all things here! How cleanly do we feed and lie! What peace, what unanimity! How calm and quiet a delight Is it, alone, To read and meditate and write, By none offended, and offending none! To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease; And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease. The roomy veranda, with rustic railing and shaggy cedar posts, the sloping roof, the great chimney, the climbing vines, the wide rustic door with latch-string out, and a curiously twisted knurl for a door-knob, all fit into the picture. The cabin is a story and a half. The seams of the plain boards of the interior are covered with split-birch saplings. Originally the rafters had the bark on, but they have been denuded by woodborers, which have left a delicate tracery instead. A satiny yellow birch partition separates the living-room and bedroom on the lower floor. Stairs lead to the loft, which has a guestroom, and a roomy attic, with extra cots. The bedsteads are made of satiny birch. The furniture is home-made. The legs of tables, stands, window-seat, and mantel-trimming, of sumac limbs, have a spiral twist, from the imprint of the climbing bitter-sweet. A smoky iron tea-kettle hangs from the swinging crane in the wide stone fireplace; on the hearth are old-time andirons and tongs. The built-in book-shelves overflow with books and magazines. The writing-table, near the window-seat in one corner, is a plain board table, supported by tripods of sumac. In a niche under the stairs stands the dining-table. At the right of the fireplace is the kitchen corner, and the dish-cupboard, with rustic loops for handles. A few 'needments' sufficed the hermit for his simple housekeeping. His treasures: the blue and white coverlids, the wool of which grew on the backs of Roxbury sheep; patchwork quilts his mother made; a few of her mulberry-pattern dishes; a woolen holder, on which a girl-visitor had appropriately outlined an oven-bird; birds' nests, and other trophies from the woods; books, and the photographs of friends. |