?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
"TO BECOME A NATURALIST LIKE MYSELF IS THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD" BURROUGHS, JOHN. Autograph Letter Signed, "To our Boys & Girls," open letter to aspiring naturalists. 4½ pages, small 4to, written on separate sheets, each hinged along left edge to a larger sheet and bound into book. The book, containing 22 leaves which are blank except for calligraphic title-page. 4to, cloth with gilt titling on spine and front cover. West Park, 9 April 1914
"When I think of how many there are of you in our great country . . . [who] write me letters . . . telling me of your interest in my life & works, & asking me questions about some bird or plant or flower you have seen or how to become a naturalist like myself--when I think of all of this, it seems quite worth while for me to return the compliment & show some interest in you, & write a letter to you collectively . . . . "To become a naturalist like myself is the easiest thing in the world if you love nature as I do. . . . I never took up nature study as a business but as a pleasure, since knowledge about the wild life around me came easy. When you bait your hook with your heart the fish always bite. . . . "You cannot all be naturalists or writers upon nature themes, but you can all be nature lovers & all be sane, clear, helpful, men & women. . . . ". . . No doubt a vast number of interesting & useful things in the great arena of nature remain to be found out. . . . I am writing you this letter just after my seventy seventh birth day, & every season without any special effort I learn some new thing about the wild life about me . . . . Nature is a book you can never read through. A fresh page is added every morning, & a new edition comes out every season. You can all be original investigators . . . . "Whitman says 'The press of my foot to the ground springs a hundred affections,' & Whitman was not a nature student either but a mighty lover. Each of you may have a hundred new affections, if you take your hearts with you as well as your eyes & ears, when you walk or drive in the country." No record of publication found. Sold as lot 151 in The American Art Association auction in New York on December 20, 1920.
