At nineteen Burnham decided that there were things in this world
he should know that could not be gleaned from the earth, trees,
and sky; and with the few dollars he had saved he came East. The
visit apparently was not a success. The atmosphere of the town in
which he went to school was strictly Puritanical, and the
townspeople much given to religious discussion. The son of the
pioneer missionary found himself unable to subscribe to the
formulas which to the others seemed so essential, and he returned
to the West with the most bitter feelings, which lasted until he was
twenty-one.
"It seems strange now," he once said to me, "but in those times
religious questions were as much a part of our daily life as to-day
are automobiles, the Standard Oil, and the insurance scandals, and
when I went West I was in an unhappy, doubting frame of mind.
The trouble was I had no moral anchors; the old ones father had
given me were gone, and the time for acquiring new ones had not
arrived." This bitterness of heart, or this disappointment, or
whatever the state of mind was that the dogmas of the New
England town had inspired in the boy from the prairie, made him
reckless. For the life he was to lead this was not a handicap. Even
as a lad, in a land-grant war in California, he had been under
gunfire, and for the next fifteen years he led a life of danger and of
daring; and studied in a school of experience than which, for a
scout, if his life be spared, there can be none better.
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