Edmund Kelly lived to be near eighty-eight years of age. Jay Gould is authority for the statement that, besides 'the aged partner of his bosom,' he left ‘nine children, eighty-four grandchildren, one hundred and two great-grandchildren, together with a large circle of friends.'

The maternal grandmother, Lovina Liscom,' was a big woman, thrifty and domestic, who reared ten children, ‘and made every one of them toe the mark.' She bore the brunt of the care of the family, not, however, without on occasion taking her shiftless husband to task. 'She was big enough,' her grandson used to say, 'to take Gran'ther across her knees and spank him. I don't know that she ever did it, but he probably deserved it.' She lived to be past eighty.

Chauncey A. Burroughs, the father of John Burroughs, one of nine children, was born in 1803, in a log house built by his parents on settling in Roxbury. He had sandy hair, a face ruddy and freckled; was quick and blustering in his ways; with a voice harsh and strident. As transparent as a child, with no art to conceal anything, he did not dream that others might sometimes have things to conceal. When a boy he had been mean, saucy, and quarrelsome; given to card-playing, swearing, horse-racing, and Sabbath-breaking. In early manhood he experienced religion, joined the church, and became an exemplary member of the community. His schooling was that of the rural districts. For a time he taught a district school. His reading was confined to Bible and hymn-book, his weekly secular paper, and his monthly religious paper ('The Signs of the Times'). (Among the keepsakes of John Burroughs were time-stained copies of this paper of his father's which he had so often seen him read with fervor - a fervor like unto the son's pursuit of Nature.)

Father was a man of unimpeachable veracity [says the son]. He was bigoted and intolerant in his religious and political views. A fond husband, a kind father, a good neighbor, a worthy citizen, and a consistent member of the church. He improved his farm, paid his debts, and kept his faith. He had no æsthetic sensibility and no

1 In Our Friend John Burroughs, J. B. gives the name as Lavinia Minot. I remember his hesitancy when giving this: 'Good gracious! have I forgotten my grandmother's name Minot? - I think it was Minot.' And so it was recorded; but later, on being shown Jay Gould's record, which gives 'Lovina Liscom,' he said that was probably correct. Hence the latter name appears in John Burroughs, Boy and Man.

Condensed from Our Friend John Burroughs.

manners. The primrose by the river's brim would not have been seen by him at all. His disregard of the ordinary civilities often distressed Mother, but, when she would accuse him of having no manners, he would retort, 'I've got all I ever had, for I never used any of them.' I doubt if he ever said 'Thank you' in his life — I certainly never heard him.

However lacking in delicacy his father was, he did not lack candor; and, however brusque, he was really affectionate and tender-hearted. Refusing requests for holidays with strong emphasis, he would yield to coaxing; he almost never gave the punishment he threatened; would tell a joke on himself with the same gusto as on another; and ask most embarrassing questions without dreaming of giving offense.

In size and physical make-up the son was much like the father. He detected in himself many of his father's ways: 'My loud and harmless barking when angered, I get from him— the Kellys are more apt to bite.' The ingenuousness and unselfconsciousness which he described in his father were, in a measure, common to him also; likewise his unimpeachable veracity, his consistency, his candor, and his ever-ready defense of the faith within him.

Chauncey Burroughs, with no comprehension of his son's aspirations, felt uneasy at his pronounced taste for books. This plucking of fruit from the Tree of Knowledge was dangerous business. Arithmetic was all very well, but when a boy wanted an algebra, it boded no good; and when he wanted to go to the village academy - clearly there was something wrong a-brewing; no telling what he would come to; he might even become a Methodist minister - a degradation below which, in the eyes of the Old School Baptist, he could scarcely fall.

John's mother interceded when the lad pleaded for more schooling than the district school afforded. Because John was always coaxing to go away to school, his father concluded he would never amount to anything in short, never become a successful farmer. He had less faith in him than in any of his other sons, and helped him but little in his struggles, either toward an education or toward getting established in life, and yet, in later years, when the pinch came, he was helped by him far more than by any of his other children - 'a curious retribution,' said the son, 'which gave me pleasure, and him no

pain.' When the son began to receive conspicuous recognition as a writer, the father remained strangely silent; however, when his daughter Abigail once showed him a magazine article about his son, accompanied by his photograph, the father looked at it a long time, and, though he made no comment, his eyes filled with tears. 'My aspirations were a sealed book to him. I was better unhelped, and better for all I could help him,' said the son understandingly; 'and he was a loving father all the same.'

Once, at a time of marked religious excitement in the community, the boy John came upon his father praying in an outbuilding and ran away, knowing it was not for him to hear. His father used to say that he had been so carried away by the preaching of Elder Jim Mead as not to know whether he was in the body or out of the body—a capacity for exalted emotionalism which can be traced in the son's life as well; one instance being when, as a small boy, on reading aloud a passage in the 'Life of Washington,' he became oblivious to everything around him. 'I was lifted out of myself,' he said, 'caught up in a cloud of feeling and wafted I know not whither.' Another similar exalted state he thus described:

I recall one summer morning when walking on the top of a stone wall that ran across the summit of one of those broad-backed hills which you yourself know. I had in my hand a bit of a root of a tree, shaped much like a pistol. As I walked along on the toppling stones, I flourished this and called and shouted and exulted, and let my enthusiasm have full swing. It was a moment of supreme happiness. I was literally intoxicated-with what, I do not know; I only remember that life seemed amazingly beautiful. I was on the crest of some curious wave of emotion, and my soul sparkled and flashed in the sunlight.'

In the first chapter of 'The Light of Day,' he pictures a scene in his mother's kitchen: his father and a Methodist neighbor, Jerry Bouton, disputing over their respective religious tenets, predestination, and free salvation. Jerry would come sauntering in after supper, whittling a short stick, always whittling toward him. Having arranged his arguments as he came over the hill, he would give scant heed to preliminaries, but would quickly launch text after text at Neighbor Burroughs in support of his own doctrines. With Bible on From Our Friend John Burroughs.