Transcription:
2 I am not yet done with that Picturesque affair of the Dewings but I will begin that Yosemite article in a few days will
in all probability send you the M.S. about the first of Feb. though I am to be depended upon illegible to time. A kind of
respectable hash of my recent description of the valley would not take long but a brand new one will I fear be slow. I never
can tell how anything I begin of a literary kind will end. Sometimes my descriptions are contemptible mean lean scrawny, without
any color or atmosphere about them, again they are all fluffily sentimentous drifting about unguided foundationless as mist,
to thin for any terrestrial use