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October 6, 1902. Dear Mr. John Muir, I am glad to receive your letter of September 29th and to know that you will undertake
the Silva review. As for the definite plan to be followed in writing such an article, we should wish you to follow your own
sense of the fitness of things--indeed, that you should take what for you would be the path of least resistance. A criticism
of technicalities in Professor Sargent's work would, we think, be out of place in such an article, and as the great majority
of readers of your article could not, in the nature of the case, become owners of the work itself, it seems to us advisable
that you should give such a general description of the edition as first of allto let your reader know what you are talking
about. Then you would naturally wish to give your impressions upon the way in which Professor Sargent has performed his long
task. These points we think would be essential for such a review, but the chief interest to Atlantic readers, after all, would
rather lie in such thoughts and suggestions as the volumes themselves might arouse in your own mind. What, after all, is the
significance of such a splendid set of volumes as these? What do they prove as to the growing love of Americans for the outdoor
world? What influence has an affectionate knowledge of American trees upon our advancing American civilization? What does
it mean for the individual to cultivate under such guidance as Professor Sargent's an intimate knowledge of the trees of our
own forests and lawns? There are a hundred things to say here, and you can say any one of them very much better than we can.
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