Transcription:
Rough draft of letter July, ? 1904 Mr. J. E. Calkins, Davenport, Iowa. My dear Sir: Good lovers of God's wildness
are far from common even in these days of nature books, nature studies, and annual outings, etc., so you may be sure I sorely
regret missing you. I was in Australia when your kind letter to me was written (March 29th), and did not get home until the
end of June. It was some days later before I found it in the big talus of books, pamphlets, and letters piled on my desk.
But you must come again. Editors should take a good long rest every year - a complete rest, especially after long-continued
overwork has resulted in nervous prostration, None of you observations on the country, climate, conditions of living, etc.
in long letters to the Democrat - a queer cure for overwork, particularly in the southern cities where real (unreal) estate
agents make one dizzy with their confounded mean temperature. No, you must change all that. Come with your wife to the Sierra
next spring and rest under a Sequoia or a sugar pine. Come to my house and make it your headquarters and home, and I'll show
you how it is done. If you come by the Santa Fe get off at Muir Station, near our house. If by Southern Pacific, stop at
Martinez, within a mile and a half of our house. If by the Union and Central Pacific you had better go on to San Francisco
and there take a Santa Fe train to Muir , which is only an hour and a half's ride, including the sail across the bay to Pt.
Richmond. You will find a summer in the Sierra a genuine recreation. I've been away more than a year, and have seen something
of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand - the parks, gardens, art galleries, etc. of Europe, broad fertile Russia,
the Crimea, Black Sea region, the forests and glaciers of the Caucasus, the broad densely forested ridges of the Ural Mountains.
Draft of letter evidently incomplete 03419