Title:
Letter from John Muir to [John] Burroughs, 1909 Dec 14.
Creator:
John Muir
Publisher:
University of the Pacific Library Holt-Atherton Special Collections. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies
of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Contributor:
[John] Burroughs
Date:
1909 Dec 14
2008
Type:
Text
Format:
Image/jpeg2000
Identifier:
muir18_0952-md-1
Source:
Original letter dimensions unknown.
Language:
eng
Coverage:
Martinez, Calif.
Rights:
Copyrighted
The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust. To purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission
to publish or exhibit them, see
http://library.pacific.edu/ha/forms
Muir-Hanna Trust
1984
Transcription:
IllegibleMartinez, California Dec,14,1909 Now, dear Burroughs, don t waste your good nature. I only did as you requested
with the Yosemite geology, but you give me no thanks---only the other stuff. If obstinacy ,unyielding an e Yosemite dome,
strangely nixed With love of flowers hills and dales, bees and trees, bird song and brook song, is a Scotch characteristic,
then you, my dear John, are as Scottish as I am or over likely Illegible be. If instead of stubbornly sailing to Hawaiian
Moweries and volcanoes you had allowed, me to take you to the head fountains of the Merced and Tuolumne on the high Sierra,
you would have got plain lessons in ice action and water action and on the relationship of the great valley to existing end
ancient glaciers at its head and on either side of it, and to all the other features of the landscape in general. Little
is to be gained on such studies in books and. still less in squabbling controversy. Only long plodding observation in the
field yields anything worth while, at least to poor dreamy wanderers as dull as I. Earth sculpture, and the life and beauty
that goes with it, is a noble study, and now that you have got Yosemite on the brain, why not come again. I'd be delighted
to have you in spite of your rank Scotch Catskill stubbornness ,and you might perhaps learn to endure or ignore my glacial
behavior and airs. Anyhow, I am with all good wishes for the new year, faithfully your friend, John Muir. I m sad about
Gilder. what a loss we have sustained and all the country. New York seems lonesome to me now he has gone. J.M. Illegible
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