Transcription:
1 cca1900 y? letterhead My Dear Old Friend, John Muir: My first impulse was to make my address to you somewhat more
formal, putting perhaps an Esq. or L.L.D. after your name, but have concluded finally on plain John Muir just as Hawitt and
I always speak of you. I noticed and of course read with the utmost pleasure, I assure you, your Article in the Atlantic Monthly
of this month, recounting some of the experiences of your earlier years, and among those sundry incidents of your life at
University, where I became acquainted with you, and I may add also with that dear old clock? and its ingenious mechanisms,
and with some of the varied functions you would illegible it to perform. I have often spoken to my friends about that wonderful
clock? and the manner in which you brought it into play in kindling the fires at the School House the winter you taught, as
that was almost the first thing you told me about, when in the Spring following we both got back to our Studies from our respective
Schools. Concerning your observations in the Article referred to, and also suggested in your letter to me of some four years
ago, that you took your first lessons in Botany from me, that lesson comes to my mind quite vividly. 02819