Transcription:
Fall River, Col. Co., Wisconsin, Dec. 19th, 1882. Prof. John Muir, Through my friend Superintendent Henry Neill I learned
that you were from our county. I have followed your literary course with much interest and have collected considerable literary
matter regarding yourself and work which I should like to use,if you do not object,in an article for some of the eastern periodicals
to which I am a contributor. I desire to write a series of articles on western literature. The first of the series entitled
A Western Capital (Madison) was published in the Christian Register of Boston last summer.The sketch included an extended
notice of Prof. Anderson and his horse Mythology, and a briefer of Prof. Bascom. I should like to make the sketch of yourself
a magazine article, and would like to know more of your work than I have gleaned from the papers.Have your scientific and
literary papers been published in book form? I have your contribution to Harpers, but I should like to be able to write definitely
of your work as a whole. Any personal information which you can supply I shall receive gladly, and if you wish will submit
the article to you for criticism before I send it for publication. Allow me to say that we Badgers are very proud of you
and are not willing to give you up to the Far West.We want your work included in the literature of the Mississippi valley.The
pleasure I experienced in the perusal of Hugh Miller's Schools and Schoolmasters and Tyndall's Alpine Sketches has been intensified
and repeated in your sketches of the mountain scenery of California, and I am not a scientist but a lover of science,and congratulate
you heartily on your splendid success as author and scientist. May I hope for a speedy reply? Sincerely yours, Mrs. Sarah
D. Hobart