Transcription:
Madison, July 9, 1900. John Muir. My dear Friend. It is too long that I have read no written syllable of yours - and
know not but you are now a humanitarian missionary in China. - not with blood and thunder. The death of Catharine Merrill
brings back many a memory - and those all precious? , which you and I have in common. - I am looking for the letter to me
you dictated to her de profundis where all skill in surgery seemed unable to save your eyes. - What a noble career to the
very end. - How the idea of her life doth sweetly creep Much Ado. IV.1.229. Letters full of heart come to me from her scholars.
Last Wed. was the centennial of my college, Middlebury. - I had engaged to be there and speak on some matters well-known to
me - but for some preventing Providence - This Providence came at the eleventh hour in the combined vetos? of daughter and
Doctor - who convinced me that my assurance that I could make the journey, etc. was the best proof that I could not. You know
that if I must be hemmed in - there is no St. Helena less exasperating than mine. not even that of the illegible of the Vatican?
.