Burroughs, John, 1837-1921 -- Childhood and youth; Naturalists -- New York (State) -- Biography
My maternal grandfather, Edmund Kelly, was Irish, though born in this
country about 1765. It is from his Irish strain that I get many of my
Celtic characteristics--my decidedly feminine temperament. I always felt
that I was more a Kelly than a Burroughs. Grandfather Kelly was a
small man, with a big head and marked Irish features. He entered the
Continental army when a mere lad in some menial capacity, but before the
end he carried a musket in the ranks. He was with Washington at Valley
Forge and had many stories to tell of their hardships. He was upward of
seventy-five years old when I first remember him--a little man in a blue
coat with brass buttons. He and Granny used to come to our house once or
twice a year for a week or two at a time. Their permanent home was with
Uncle Martin Kelly in Red Kill, eight miles away. I remember him as a
great angler. How many times in the May or June mornings, as soon as he
had had his breakfast, have I seen him digging worms and getting ready
to go a-fishing up Montgomery Hollow or over in Meeker's Hollow, or over
in West Settlement! You could always be sure he would bring home a nice
string of trout. Occasionally I was permitted to go with him. How nimbly
he would walk, even when he was over eighty, and how skilfully he would
take the trout! I was an angler myself before I was ten, but Grandfather
would take trout from places in the stream where I would not think it
worth while to cast my hook. But I never fished when I went with him,
I carried the fish and watched him. The pull home, often two or three
miles, tried my young legs, but Grandfather would show very little
fatigue, and I know he did not have the ravenous hunger I always had
when I went fishing, so much so that I used to think there was in this
respect something peculiar about going fishing. One hour along the trout
streams would develop more hunger in me than half a day hoeing corn or
working on the road--a peculiarly fierce, all-absorbing desire for food,
so that a piece of rye bread and butter was the most delicious thing in
the world. I remember that one June day my cousin and I, when we were
about seven or eight years old, set out for Meeker's Hollow for trout.
It was a pull of over two miles and over a pretty hard hill. Our courage
held out until we reached the creek, but we were too hungry to fish; we
turned homeward and fed upon the wild strawberries in the pastures and
meadows we passed through and they kept us alive until we reached
home. Oh, that youthful hunger beside the trout stream, was there ever
anything else like it in the world!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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