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850 Madison Ave., New York, June 18th, 1913. Dear friend Muir: Your Boyhood and Youth and your last photograph are giving
us great pleasure, and I have been on the brink of writing to you over and over again. Now, Providence has housed me for two
days with a very slight operation and my first letter on recovery is one to you. My better half had a sorrowful time in April
in losing her father, and Mr. Morgan to whom she was much devoted. She became quite run down, but is now if possible more
herself than ever, and she is the synonym of good health and unlimited spirits. All the others are well, and at Castle Rock.
We are enjoying a glorious June. Your artistic comment on the east side of the Castle - too much road, too little lawn, sank
deep, and all this spring I have been adding lawn and deducting roadway with my Italian workmen. The effect is charming. The
practical results are to be experienced in the next storm, for one now leaves the carriage 60 feet from the front door. We
constantly think of you,and your arboreal and glacial philosophy has given us all a new footing, for our religious beliefs.
I was reminded of you also the other day in meeting Johnson of the Century at the Columbia Commencement. It is, as I had feared,
that he has practically retired from the great magazine for which he has done so much, apparently to make way for a more commercial
or money-making spirit. I do not certainly know, but I fear this is the case. It is evidently a severe blow to him, for I
could see that Mrs. Johnson (a really devoted wife) tried to keep him off the subject. He will probably write you, confidentially,
the real inwardness of his resignation. All who have read your book are delighted with the 'Boyhood'. I am giving it to some
boys I know, because its purpose is so fine under the adventure. Far as conceivable from this is the work I am now giving
all my time and thoughts to the 'Litanotheres'. Chapter after chapter is rounding to and I feel sure it is worth the thirteen
years' work, because it is really new, and what it is more important, true. I may be oversanguine, but it appears to give
for the first time a real picture of how one animal transforms into another, totally unlike it. There would be a chorus of
greetings to you, if all knew I was writing, but Loulu is the only one hear, and she sends a hearful of affection. When shall
we see you again? Always your devoted friend, Henry Fairfield Osborn