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Overview
These letters, first published in 1915, offer fascinating insights into Muir's daily life in Yosemite. In lyric terms, he recounts his days of sheepherding and guiding visitors through rugged landscapes. With reverence, he describes the region's diverse splendors and his studies of wildlife, trees, and flowers. The letters provide a moving portrait of a friendship based on a mutual love of nature and God, reflecting a devotion to the natural world rarely seen in modern life.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780486840208 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 112 |
| File size: | 729 KB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
LETTERS TO A FRIEND
"The Hollow," January 21, 1866.
Your last, written in the delicious quiet of a Sabbath in the country, has been received and read a good many times. I was interested with the description you draw of your sermon. You speak of such services like one who appreciated and relished them. But although the page of Nature is so replete with divine truth, it is silent concerning the fall of man and the wonders of Redeeming Love. Might she not have been made to speak as clearly and eloquently of these things as she now does of the character and attributes of God? It may be a bad symptom, but I will confess that I take more intense delight from reading the power and goodness of God from "the things which are made" than from the Bible. The two books, however, harmonize beautifully, and contain enough of divine truth for the study of all eternity. It is so much easier for us to employ our faculties upon these beautiful tangible forms than to exercise a simple, humble living faith such as you so well describe as enabling us to reach out joyfully into the future to expect what is promised as a thing of to-morrow.
I wish, Mrs. Carr, that I could see your mosses and ferns and lichens. I am sure that you must be happier than anybody else. You have so much less of winter than others; your parlor garden is verdant and in bloom all the year.
I took your hint and procured ten or twelve species of moss all in fruit, also a club-moss, a fern, and some liverworts and lichens. I have also a box of thyme. I would go a long way to see your herbarium, more especially your ferns and mosses. These two are by far the most interesting of all the natural orders to me. The shaded hills and glens of Canada are richly ornamented with these lovely plants. Aspidium spinulosum is common everywhere, so also is A. marginale, A. aculeatum, A. Lonchitis, and A. acrostichoides are also abundant in many places. I found specimens of most of the other aspidiums, but those I have mentioned are more common. Cystopteris bulbifera grows in every arbor-vitæ shade in company with the beautiful and fragrant Linnæa borealis. Botrychium lunarioides is a common fern in many parts of Canada. Osmunda regalis is far less common here than in Wisconsin. I found it in only two localities. Six Claytoniana only in one place near the Niagara Falls. The delicate Adiantum trembles upon every hillside. Struthiopteris Germanica grows to a great height in open places in arbor-vitæ and black ash swamps. Camptosorus rhizophyllus and Scolopendrium officinarum I found in but one place, amid the wet limestone rocks of Owen Sound. There are many species of sedge common here which I do not remember having seen in Wisconsin. Calypso borealis is a lovely plant found in a few places in dark hemlock woods. But this is an endless thing; I may as well stop here.
I have been very busy of late making practical machinery. I like my work exceedingly well, but would prefer inventions which would require some artistic as well as mechanical skill. I invented and put in operation a few days ago an attachment for a self-acting lathe, which has increased its capacity at least one third. We are now using it to turn broom-handles, and as these useful articles may now be made cheaper, and as cleanliness is one of the cardinal virtues, I congratulate myself in having done something like a true philanthropist for the real good of mankind in general. What say you? I have also invented a machine for making rake-teeth, and another for boring for them and driving them, and still another for making the bows, still another used in making the handles, still another for bending them, so that rakes may now be made nearly as fast again. Farmers will be able to produce grain at a lower rate, the poor get more bread to eat. Here is more philanthropy; is it not? I sometimes feel as though I was losing time here, but I am at least receiving my first lessons in practical mechanics, and as one of the firm here is a millwright, and as I am permitted to make as many machines as I please and to remodel those now in use, the school is a pretty good one.
I wish that Allie and Henry B. could come to see me every day, there are no children in our family here, and I miss them very much. They would like to see the machinery, and I could turn wooden balls and tops, rake-bows before being bent would make excellent canes, and if they should need crutches broom-handles and rake- handles would answer. I have not heard from Henry for a long time. I suppose that this evening finds you in your pleasant library amid books and plants and butterflies. Are you really successful in keeping happy, sportive "winged blossoms" in such weather as this?
One of the finest snowstorms is raging now; the roaring wind thick with snow rushes cruelly through the desolate trees. Our rapid stream that so short a time ago shone and twinkled in the hazy air bearing away the nuts and painted leaves of autumn is now making a doleful noise as it gropes its way doubtfully and sulkily amid heaps of snow and broken ice.
The weather here is unusually cold. How do matters stand at the University? Can it be that the Doctor is really going to become practical farmer? He will have time to compose excellent lectures while following the plow and harrow or when shearing his sheep.
I thank you for your long, good letter. Those who are in a lonely place and far from home know how to appreciate a friendly letter. Remember me to the Doctor and to all my friends and believe me
Yours with gratitude, John Muir.
[1866 or 1867.]
[Beginning of letter missing.]
I have not before sent these feelings and thoughts to anybody, but I know that I am speaking to one who by long and deep communion with Nature understands them, and can tell me what is true or false and unworthy in my experiences.
The ease with which you have read my mind from hints taken from letters to my child friends gives me confidence to write.
Thank you for the compliment of the great picture-frame. That is at least one invention that I should not have discovered, — but the picture is but an insect, an animalcule. I have stood by a majestic pine, witnessing its high branches waving "in sign of worship" or in converse with the spirit of the storms of autumn, till I forgot my very existence, and thought myself unworthy to be made a leaf of such a tree.
What work do you use in the study of the Fungi? and where can I get a copy? I think of your description of these "little children of the vegetable kingdom" whenever I meet any of them. I am busy with the mosses and liverworts, but find difficulty in procuring a suitable lens. Here is a specimen of Climacium Americanum, a common moss here but seldom in fruit.
I was sorry to hear of your loss at the University of so valuable a man from such a cause. I hope that the wheels of your institution are again in motion.
I have not yet, I am sorry to say, found "The Stone Mason of Saint Point," though I have sought for it a great deal. By whom is it published?
Please remember me to my friends. I often wish myself near the Doctor with my difficulties in science. Tell Allie Mr. Muir does not forget him.
Trout's Mills, near Meaford, September 13th, [1866.]
Your precious letter with its burden of cheer and good wishes has come to our hollow, and has done for me that work of sympathy and encouragement which I know you kindly wished it to do. It came at a time when much needed, for I am subject to lonesomeness at times. Accept, then, my heartfelt gratitude — would that I could make better return!
I am sorry over the loss of Professor Stirling's letter, for I waited and wearied for it a long time. I have been keeping up an irregular course of study since leaving Madison, but with no great success. I do not believe that study, especially of the Natural Sciences, is incompatible with ordinary attention to business; still I seem to be able to do but one thing at a time. Since undertaking a month or two ago to invent new machinery for our mill, my mind seems to so bury itself in the work that I am fit for but little else; and then a lifetime is so little a time that we die ere we get ready to live. I would like to go to college, but then I have to say to myself, "You will die ere you can do anything else." I should like to invent useful machinery, but it comes, "You do not wish to spend your lifetime among machines and you will die ere you can do anything else." I should like to study medicine that I might do my part in helping human misery, but again it comes, "You will die ere you are ready or able to do so." How intensely I desire to be a Humboldt! but again the chilling answer is reiterated; but could we but live a million of years, then how delightful to spend in perfect contentment so many thousand years in quiet study in college, as many amid the grateful din of machines, as many among human pain, so many thousand in the sweet study of Nature among the dingles and dells of Scotland, and all the other less important parts of our world! Then perhaps might we, with at least a show of reason, "shuffle off this mortal coil" and look back upon our star with something of satisfaction; I should be ashamed — if shame might be in the other world — if any of the powers, virtues, essences, etc., should ask me for common knowledge concerning our world which I could not bestow. But away with this aged structure and we are back to our handful of hasty years half gone, all of course for the best did we but know all of the Creator's plan concerning us. In our higher state of existence we shall have time and intellect for study. Eternity, with perhaps the whole unlimited creation of God as our field, should satisfy us, and make us patient and trustful, while we pray with the Psalmist, "Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."
I was struck with your remarks about our real home of stillness and peace. How little does the outer and noisy world in general know of that "real home" and real inner life! Happy indeed they who have a friend to whom they can unmask the workings of their real life, sure of sympathy and forbearance!
I sent for the book which you recommend; I have just been reading a short sketch of the life of the mother of Lamartine.
You say about the humble life of our Saviour and about the trees gathering in the sunshine. These are beautiful things.
What you say respecting the littleness of the number who are called to "the pure and deep communion of the beautiful, all-loving Nature," is particularly true of the hardworking, hard-drinking, stolid Canadians. In vain is the glorious chart of God in Nature spread out for them. So many acres chopped is their motto, as they grub away amid the smoke of the magnificent forest trees, black as demons and material as the soil they move upon. I often think of the Doctor's lecture upon the condition of the different races of men as controlled by physical agencies. Canada, though abounding in the elements of wealth, is too difficult to subdue to permit the first few generations to arrive at any great intellectual development. In my long rambles last summer I did not find a single person who knew anything of botany and but a few who knew the meaning of the word; and wherein lay the charm that could conduct a man who might as well be gathering mammon so many miles through these fastnesses to suffer hunger and exhaustion was with them never to be discovered. Do not these answer well to the person described by the poet in these lines?
"A primrose by the river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And nothing more."
I thank Dr. Carr for his kind remembrance of me, but still more for the good patience he had with so inept a scholar.
We remember in a peculiar way those who first gave us the story of Redeeming Love from the great book of Revelation, and I shall not forget the Doctor, who first laid before me the great book of Nature, and though I have taken so little from his hand he has at least shown me where those mines of priceless knowledge lie and how to reach them. O how frequently, Mrs. Carr, when lonely and wearied, have I wished that like some hungry worm I could creep into that delightful kernel of your house, your library, with its portraits of scientific men, and so bountiful a store of their sheaves amid the blossom and verdure of your little kingdom of plants, luxuriant and happy as though holding their leaves to the open sky of the most flower-loving zone in the world!
That "sweet day" did as you wished reach our hollow, and another is with us now. The sky has the haze of autumn, and excepting the aspen not a tree has motion. Upon our enclosing wall of verdure new tints appear, the gorgeous dyes of autumn are to be plainly seen, and the forest seems to have found out that again its leaf must fade. Our stream, too, has a less cheerful sound, and as it bears its foam-bells pensively away from the shallow rapids it seems to feel that summer is past.
You propose, Mrs. Carr, an exchange of thoughts, for which I thank you very sincerely. This will be a means of pleasure and improvement which I could not have hoped ever to have been possessed of, but then here is the difficulty: I feel I am altogether incapable of properly conducting a correspondence with one so much above me. We are, indeed, as you say, students in the same life school, but in very different classes. I am but an alpha novice in those sciences which you have studied and loved so long. If, however, you are willing in this to adopt the plan that our Saviour endeavored to beat into the stingy Israelites, viz., to "give, hoping for nothing again," all will be well; and as long as your letters resemble this one before me, which you have just written, in genus, order, cohort, class, province, or kingdom, be assured that by way of reply you shall at least receive an honest "Thank you."
Tell Allie that Mr. Muir thanks him for his pretty flowers and would like to see him, also that I have a story for him which I shall tell some other time.
Please remember me to my friends, and now, hoping to receive a letter from you at least semi-occasionally, I remain
Yours with gratitude, John Muir.
Address: — Meaford P. O., County Grey, Canada West.
April 3rd, [1867.]
You have, of course, heard of my calamity.
The sunshine and the winds are working in all the gardens of God, but I — I am lost.
I am shut in darkness. My hard, toil-tempered muscles have disappeared, and I am feeble and tremulous as an ever-sick woman.
Please tell the Butlers that their precious sympathy has reached me.
I have read your "Stone Mason" with a great deal of pleasure. I send it with this and will write my thoughts upon it when I can.
My friends here are kind beyond what I can tell and do much to shorten my immense blank days.
I send no apology for so doleful a note because I feel, Mrs. Carr, that you will appreciate my feelings.
Most cordially, J. Muir.
Sunday, April 6th, [1867.]
Your precious letter of the 15th reached me last night. By accident it was nearly lost.
I cannot tell you, Mrs. Carr, how much I appreciate your sympathy and all of these kind thoughts of cheer and substantial consolation which you have stored for me in this letter.
I am much better than when I wrote you; can now sit up about all day and in a room partly lighted.
Your Doctor says, "The aqueous humor may be restored." How?
By nature or by art?
The position of my wound will be seen in this figure.
The eye is pierced just where the cornea meets the sclerotic coating. I do not know the depth of the wound or its exact direction. Sight was completely gone from the injured eye for the first few days, and my physician said it would be ever gone, but I was surprised to find that on the fourth or fifth day I could see a little with it. Sight continued to increase for a few days, but for the last three weeks it has not perceptibly increased or diminished.
I called in a Dr. Parvin lately, said to be a very skillful oculist and of large experience both here and in Europe. He said that he thought the iris permanently injured; that the crystalline lens was not injured; that, of course, my two eyes would not work together; and that on the whole my chances of distinct vision were not good. But the bare possibility of anything like full sight is now my outstanding hope. When the wound was made about one third of a teaspoonful of fluid like the white of an egg flowed out upon my fingers, — aqueous fluid, I suppose. The eye has not yet lost its natural appearance.
I can see sufficiently well with it to avoid the furniture, etc., in walking through a room. Can almost, in full light, recognize some of my friends but cannot distinguish one letter from another of common type. I would like to hear Dr. Carr's opinion of my case.
(Continues…)
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