Title:
Letter from John Muir to [Robert Underwood] Johnson, 1895 Feb 7.
Creator:
John Muir
Publisher:
The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies of
the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Contributor:
[Robert Underwood] Johnson
Date:
1895 Feb 7
2008
Type:
Text
Format:
Image/jpeg2000
Identifier:
muir08_0822-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The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust.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:
37 Martinez, Feb. 7, 1895 My dear Mr Johnson, I take great pleasure in sending you today by registered mail the hard
rubbed M S of Glacier Bay. I have done my best on it believe I have now a capital article. Like a carpenter building with
precious old lumber-- I, in tale adjoining, Lift old treasures into day; If not gold or perfect coining, They are metals
anyway: Thou canst sort them, thou canst sunder, Thou canst melt make them one; Then take that with smiling wonder, Stamp
it like thyself my son. If you like for I'll be hanged if I spend more time on it. Ive written every word of it over again.
Sargent sent me this the other day, which though too praisey for most people to see I am tempted to send you. I am reading
your Sierra book I want to tell you that I have never read discriptions of trees that so pictured them to the mind as yours
do. No fellow who was at once a poet, naturalist, a keen observer has to my knowledge ever written about trees before, I believe
you are the man who ought to have written a Silva of North America. Your book is one of the great productions of its kind
I congratulate you on it. This is confidential. Dont show it to anybody. Ever Yours, John Muir Bancroft Library