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THE WORLD'S WORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE COMPANY-PUBLISHERS 34 UNION SQUARE,EAST NEW YORK WALTER H. PAGE EDITOR Mr. John Muir
2. Then you put down the big thing, your autobiography. And in writing about this you said some characteristically modest
things about how much more important the big world seemed than any man's life; but you betrayed, nevertheless, the everlasting
necessity that is upon you of writing this book, when you said that it would offer opportunities here and there to say a good
word for God. Now if I do not mistake the temper of these times a good word for God would come very opportunely. In all this
rampant nature study, since it has become a fad, there is too little said of its bigger aspects. In order to balance and steady
it, we need this book from you. I know I have written this same thing to you dozens of times before, and I know that dozens
of wiser men than I have told you that your autobiography is a thing that you owe to your readers. You owe it, too, to the
mountains and the glaciers that you have been in such close partnership with for so long a time. -3- Now I am going to
be vain enough to tell you some news about my enterprises, not because they are particularly interesting in themselves, but
because I hope they will interest you with reference to the publication of your books. Our publishing house has had a success
that has outrun our expectations. I do not mean by this that we have done any extraordinary thing, but I do mean that we have
had the good sense or the good fortune, or both, to lay the foundations of it without making any structural mistake. We have
just now moved into a building that has been built especially for us, which is six stories high, filled with workers in every
part of it, in spite of the fact that our publishing list is, of course, not a large one. We are not particularly ambitious
to build a largo publishing list very quickly, for our ambitions lie rather in the cutting of good books and in making the
most of then, rather than in getting many books. The main trouble with the business is that, when a good book is put forth,
it comes along with such a multitude of other books that it gets a hearing for a day or a month or a season and then the continuous
flood of new publications pusher it out of public attention. 02452