Transcription:
Copy of Mr. Muir's letter of Jan. 2,1882. Martinez, California, January 2, 1882. Dear Mrs Bidwell, I wish you and
the General a happy newYear I would be most happy could I deliver this greeting in person all the more so since I learn from
your last letter that you are about to leave California for a few months. We enjoyed the short glimps we had of the General
during his runaway visit but were greatly disappointed in his not spending the evening with illegible we shall look forward
however to a good visit from you both as one of the best things promised in the newYear. Doctor and Mrs. Parry were here for
two days some little time after their visit to Ranch Chico and they were most ardent in their praises of your beautiful home
while I rehearsed our grand camp enjoyments about Shasta and Lassens Buttes and the Volcanoes, Bumpus, Geysers, Erigonum etc.
and the weeks dozing rest about the house, and the drives, and the fine Sacramento sail etc etc etc, I have been anxious
to run up to Chico in the old free way to tell you about the majestic icy facts that I found last summer in the Lords Arctic
palaces, but, as you can readily guess, it is not now so easy a matter to wing hithert thither like a bird, for here is a
wife and a baby and a home, together with the old press of fieldstudies and literary work, which I by no means intend to lose
sight of even in the bright bewitching smiles ofmy wee bonnie lassie, Speaking of brightness, I have been busy for a week
or two just past letting more light into the house by means of dormer windows, and in making two more open brick fire places,
Dormer-windows, open wood-fires, and perfectly happy babies make any home glow with warm sunny brightness and bring out the
best that there is in us. (End of chapter)