Transcription:
Florence, (Care Maquay Co.)4 June, 1913. My dear Friend: Coming back from a bicycle trip of some twelve days, I am met
by the news of the death of our friend, Francis Browne. He was more than a brother to me, and his loss leaves me with a sense
of great aloneness. At the same time I receive your beautiful book, your early life story, addressed in your own hand, with
the inscription on the fly-leaf in which you honor me with the title of dear friend . The inscription could not have come
to me at a time and place when the word and art of kindness from such a man as you could be more grateful. I brought with
me into exile your other books, and had read fragments of this touching and inspiring story in stray numbers of the Atlantic.
With what zest I shall read the whole now you can perhaps not imagine. It is a good and useful art to have written such a
book -- it is a great thing to have had such a life to record. God bless you, dear John Muir and may you give us more such
books. By the way, Flugel writes me that he has secured for me a lot, somewhere on the skirts of the Yosemite Valley, at
a place they have dubbed Foresta and adds the assurance that my lot adjoins that of John Muir It seems to me that Flugel must
be mixing romance with his lexicography, but, not to disturb his dream, I have sent him the sum he indicates as the price
of the lot. If we ever are indeed neighbors in thie Earthly Paradise, we'll drink a cup o1 kindness of the memory of that
good American who knew your Scotch poet all by loving heart. Such a prospect of neighborship would go near to make me engage
steerage passage by the next ship home. Gratefully and affectionately yours, Melville B. Anderson05V* 7