Transcription:
8 doubtless have come to your minds as to mine - He clasps the crags with hooked hands Close to the sun in lonely lands
This hardy, daring mountaineer - is John Muir, the Naturalist - now - today - Master of Arts, and a Doctor of Laws, eminent
as a Botanist, then Geologist Meteorologist. - author If introduced now as a Husband and manager of a fruit-ranch, it must
still be remembered that he is yet a roving naturalist - for so he writes me. The San Francisco Call says: No man since Thoreau
ever had keener sympathy with nature, a quicker vision for her mysteries, or a surer speech for their interpretation than
Mr. Muir. Emerson who met Muir in California, and was guided by him through the Yosemite Valley, said - He is more wonderful
than Thoreau. The the interesting amusing account of your disappointment etc - as recorded in the Atlantic Magazine quoting
parts of E's poem - Good bye, proud world illegible 9 5. Rubens, it is said, saw every object of Nature with a painter's
eye, and instantly caught the predominating feature by which the object is known distinguished; and as soon as seen he executed
it with astonishing facility. We may say of Mr. Muir - he sees with a painter's eye, but does not execute on canvas with a
brush colors. Sketching he does. His is an eye which nothing escapes, of distinguishing feature in form or color - whether
wide opened mountain landscape, or of some smiling? , happy valley; of forest trees, or flowers; of the tip of an ousel's
wing, of squirrel tails, or canon diacritic gorges. His pictures are in words - superior to the painter's so far as not limited
to little squares of canvas, but as presenting a whole gallery in continuity. - As an author his style is as clear as a mountain
brook, and sparkling as a dimpling lake upon which sunbeams fall only to be splintered, and shattered into myriads of flashing
diamonds. He is never dull. When you read him, you not only see 02841