Transcription:
Enclosed in a. H. Sellers letter of March 25, 1908 2252 West 30th street, Los Angeles, March 23, 1908. My Dear Col Sellers:-
Your second letter came to hand today, and I am reproached that I have not yet answered your first. I very much appreciate
your kindness in taking up the matter with our afflicted friend, Mr. Muir. I am sure you did it in the best possible manner.
Perhaps I should not have asked such a thing of you, but as things were it seemed to me to be a proper thing to do, since,
from all the light I could get on the situation, Mr. Muir was alone, actually in need of company and perhaps attendance, and
doubtless in need of various services; and we felt ready to do whatever might be required to set him right. I have recently
had a letter, however, in answer to one of mine, in which I tried to delicately propose that he make arrangements that would
render it possible for us to render this aid, in which the matter is all set right. He is ill and unfit, and will be so for
months. I wrote to him tliat I should proceed with my arrangements for engaging in business, but that none: of this should
make any difference in our friendship, and that if it should be possible in the future for us to take up some of his work
together we would attend to that when the time came. Of course, as you must realize, once I am embarked in the serious business
of winning a livelihood again I may not be so situated as to be able to drop my affairs in order to serve him as stenographer
and handy man, but I do not think that Mr. Muir gets that conception of the situation. In accord with your suggestion that
day, I did not conclude with any definite deal as to stipend, etc., but he came to se if he could get me to do a certain thing
for him, and after that delightful day under your roof we told him, my wife and I, as we rode over to Los Angeles in the Hooker
automobile with him, that we would come to him, and do whatever was to be done, and that he was to send for us as soon as
he had got things in shape, with all of which he clearly agreed. So I thought there was a sufficiently definite arrangement.
However, illness and death alter all arrangement a that men make, and, as I06246