Transcription:
2 Yosemite Valley Feb. 19th. 1872 Dear friend Emily, I was really glad to hear from you. I wrote you at least two
letters since receiving yours of last spring. I began to fear that I had lost you all together. I am glad to hear that you
are coming here next season. You will be sure to find me without any trouble. I have never had any pictures of myself since
that of yours wh I suppose is the one I let Mrs. Pelton have. You will find me at Blacks Hotel. I left Mr. Hutchings because
he was not kind to me. I am in every way independent and will be most happy to see you and help you to see Yosemite. You will
require no photograph to know me. The most suntanned and round shouldered and bashful man of the crowd (if you catch me in
a crowd) that's me. I will be here for some years, as last fall I began a careful study of the ancient Glacier system of this
portion of the Sierra for the Boston Academy of Science, A sort of preliminary survey of the Glacial basin of Yosemite Creek
was published in the New York Tribune of Dec. 9th (Daily) wh will give you some idea of the manner in wh my life is spent.
Some winter letters of mine may also appear in the Tribune as soon as the snow blockade is broken. Last Dec'we had a glorious
jubilee of Waterfalls, of wh I wrote an account. It will probably appear in next months Overland . If it does I hope you will
see it. How gladly I would welcome Mrs. Pelton here and wee Fannie who would have been more than half a woman ere this. I
would like to see you all, how fast those yrs have flown. How you must laugh at the memories of my odd appearance among you
all. I remember rebuking you and Mr. Lovewell without mercy for silly chat, old Mr. Newton too for irreverence and all of
you for sins of some kind or other. And something else I remember Emily - your kind words to me the first day I saw you Kind
words are likely to live in any human soil, but planted in the