Transcription:
Original letter in possession of David Gilrye Muir YoSemite, March 20, 1870 Dear Brother David G ilrye : Your last of
Jan. 6th reached me here in the rocks two weeks ago. I am very heartily glad to learn that your dear wife and wee ones have
escaped from sickness to health. Ten weeks of fever -- mercy, what intense significance these four words have for me after
my Florida experiences. We were taught to believe that Providence has special designs to accomplish by the agency of such
afflictions. I cannot say that I have the requisite amount of faith to feel the truth of this, but one invariable result of
suffering in a love-knit family is to quicken all the powers that develop compact units from clusters of human souls. I am
sitting here in a little shanty made of sugar-pine shingles this Sabbath evening. I have not been at church a single time
since leaving home. Yet this glorious valley might well be called a church, for every lover of the great Creator who comes
within the broad overwhelming influences of the place fail illegible not to worship as he never did before. The glory of
the Lord is upon all his works; it is written plainly upon all the fields of every clime, and upon every sky, but here in
this place of surpassing glory the Lord has (his) written in capitals. I hope that one day you will see and read with your
own eyes. The only sounds that strike me tonight are the ticking of the clock, the flickering of the fire and the love songs
of a host of peaceful frogs that sing out in the meadow up to their throats in slush, and the deep waving roar of the falls
like breakers on a rocky coast. Your description of the sad quiet and deserted loneliness of home made me sorry, and I felt
like returning to the old farm to take care of father and mother myself in their old days, but a little reflection served
to show that of all the family, my views and habits and disposition made me the most incapable for the task. You stirred
a happy budget of memories in speaking of my work-shop and laboratory. The happiest days and scrap portions of my life were
in that old slant-walled garret and among the smooth creeks that trickled among the sedges of Fountain Lake meadow. In recalling
the mechanical achievements of those early days I remember with satisfaction that the least successful one was that horrid
guillotine of a thing slicing off gophers' heads. Those money receipts are all right. You say that business is dull, but
that you expect to live through it all. Certainly you will,--as a family we are pretty firmly united, and you know that no
one tree of a close clump can very well fall. In my walks through the forests of humanity I find no family clump more inwoven
in root and branch than our own. I have completed the sawmill here. It works extremely well. If not a Kirk a mill I have at
least made a house and a mill here. I am glad to hear of Maggie's and Sarah's health, and of the welfare of the twins and
Joanna. My love to all. J. M. John Muir March 24. Yours of Feb. 8th rec'd. Year 1870 supplied as Muir refers to completion
of sawmill, which he commenced in Dec. 1869, probably