Transcription:
3 ears and with a newly-sworn resolution to go see these things myself before I die. Then your Alaska will come along through
my good friends, Houghton, Mifflin, Company. I am not mean enough to envy them anything, for I have no better friends than
they. But if I did envy them anything I should envy them these books. I have sent an order for a copy of the Parks to be bound
in a special fashion for me, I mean to have a copy of the old book that the Century Company issued (the one with the water
ouzel in it) bound in the same way. I shall say to my sons: When you are in doubt, here, here 4 is American literature,
by a man who is nature whom you have seen talked with. Then they will inwardly damn as I do the superficial scribblers who
write simply to make books. And I'm going with them some happy summer, with the mother of 'em all, to see these great wonders
of the world - these forests glaciers. Then I shall ask you what lies in your plans beyond these books - The Parks Alaska.
For these are not all. I know, for instance, that you have in mind in your notes a book on the Trees Shrubs of California
. When you get to that, if you aven't given it already to some other publisher,