Title:
Letter from John Muir to John Burroughs, 1911 Jul 14.
Creator:
John Muir
Publisher:
University of the Pacific Library Holt-Atherton Special Collections. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies
of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Contributor:
John Burroughs
Date:
1911 Jul 14
2008
Type:
Text
Format:
Image/jpeg2000
Identifier:
muir20_0501-md-1
Source:
Original letter dimensions unknown.
Language:
eng
Coverage:
Garrisons, N. Y.
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The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust.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:
(Original letter in possession of Dr. Clara Barrus) To John Burroughs Garrison, N.Y., July 14, 1911 Dear John Burroughs:
When I was on the train passing your place I threw you a hearty salute across the river but I don't suppose that you heard
or felt it. I would have been with you long ago if I had not been loaded down with odds and ends of duties, book making, book
selling at Boston, Yosemite and Park affairs at Washington, and making arrangements for getting off to South America, etc.
etc. I have never worked harder in my life, although I have not very much to show for it. I have got a volume of my autobiography
finished. Houghton Mifflin is to bring it out. They want to bring it out immediately but I would like to have at least part
of it run through some suitable magazine, and thus gain ten or twenty times more readers than would be likely to see it in
a book. I have been working for the last month or more on the Yosemite Book, trying to finish it before leaving for the Amazon,
but I am not suffering in a monstrous city. I am on the top of as green a hill as I have seen in all the state, with hermit
thrushes, woodchucks and warn hearts, something like those about yourself. I am at a place that I suppose you know well,
Professor Osborn's summer residence at Garrisons, opposite West Point. After Mrs. Harriman left for Arden I went down to the
Century Editorial Rooms where I was offered every facility for writing in Gilder's room, and tried to secure a boarding place
near Union Square, but the first day was so hot that it made my head swim and I hastily made preparations for this comfortable
home up on the hill here, where I will remain until perhaps the 15th of August when I expect to sail. Nothing would be more
delightful than to go from one beautiful place to another and from one friend to another but it is utterly impossible to visit
a hundredth part of the friends who are begging me to go and see them and at the same time get any work done. am now shut
up in a magnificent room pegging away at that book, and working as hard as I ever did in my life. I do not know what has got
into me, making so many books all at once. It is not natural..... With all good wishes to your big and happy family, I amever,
Faithfully your friend, John Muir 05073