Transcription:
Rough draft of letter marked To Prof. Butler and Los Angeles Scholars -letter to Los Angeles Scholars on back of same sheet
of paper . ca 20 Jul 1904 Dear David Butler, My Yosemite magnet and guide: In all my eventful life, now growing long,
no psychological X-ray has proved so positive and strong as that shot from you when you entered Yosemite 35 years ago, which,as
you well know. suddenly awakened me from contemplation of the scenery on the top of N orth Dome, and pulled me down to you
over rocks and brush by a way I knew not. This has always been to me a prime marvel. But I do not marvel that you still walk
the earth. For with tough inherited strength and temperance, however hard you have worked and however often you have had to
wipe hot sweat from your brow, as you were doing when I found you at Liberty Cap Rock, your work has been not the killing
but the preserving kind, while your soul has always soared high in the clean healthy sky. And how blest you have been with
wife and children - strange that none of the children has yet set foot in Cal ifornia . How well I remember James and Anna
and little Henry, and Agnes also, though I didn't come to know her until she was in full girl bloom, reading Greek. Give my
love to them all. I got home about a month and a half ago from a long crooked trip around the world. In a camp in a silver
fir grove near the brink of the south Yosemite wall just opposite N orth Dome I asked the President if he remembered the fine
prophetic send-off you gave him, introducing him to an audience in Madison: Mr. R., not of Mass. nor of N.Y. nor of Dakota,
but of the U.S. He said he remembered it very well, and seemed gladly interested. Then I told him the story of our faithful
correspondence and how I found you in the Valley long eventful years ago. May you live a full century at least, bearing the
years lightly, like a noble Sequoia, in serene beauty and strength. So with respect, admiration and love prays Your friend,
J.M.03410