Part 23

I felt at home with Congar and at once took possession of his premises and all that in them is. We drove down through the settlements eastward and saw the best orange groves and vineyards, but the mountains I as usual met alone. Although so gray and silent and unpromising they are full of wild gardens and ferneries, and lilyries,--some specimens ten feet high with twenty lilies big enough for bonnets. The main results I will tell you some other time, should you ever have an hour’s leisure. I go north to-day, by rail to Newhall, thence by stage to Soledad, and on to Monterey, where I will take to the woods and feel my way in free study to San Francisco. May reach the city about the middle of next month.

Heard through your factor here that Miss Powell is worse and that you would not be down soon. I received your letter and postal, also the letters you thought I had lost, via one from Salt Lake for which I sent and one from Yosemite which Black forwarded.

With love to all I am ever

Yours cordially, J. M.

1419 Taylor St., San Francisco, September 3d, [1877.]

I have just been over at Alameda with poor dear old Gibbons. You have seen him, and I need give no particulars. “The only thing I’m afraid of, John,” he said, looking up with his old child face, “is that I shall never be able to climb the Oakland hills again.” But he is so healthy and so well cared for we will be strong and hope that he will.

He spoke for an hour with characteristic unselfishness on the injustice done Dr. Kellogg in failing to recognize his long-continued devotion to science, at the botanical love-feast held here the other night. He threatens to write up the whole discreditable affair, and is very anxious to obtain from you a copy of that Gray letter to Kellogg which was not delivered.

I had a glorious ramble in the Santa Cruz woods and have found out one very interesting and picturesque fact concerning the growth of this sequoia. I mean to devote many a long week to its study. What the upshot may be, I cannot guess, but you know I am never sent away empty. I made an excursion to the summit of Mt. Hamilton in extraordinary style, accompanied by Allen, Norton, Brawley, and all the lady professors and their friends. A curious contrast to my ordinary still-hunting. Spent a week at San José; enjoyed my visit with Allen very much. Lectured to the faculty on Methods of Study without undergoing any very great scare.

I believe I wrote you from Los Angeles about my Pasadena week. Have sent a couple of letters to the “Bulletin” from there, not yet published.

I have no inflexible plans as yet for the remaining months of the season, but Yosemite seems to place itself as a most persistent candidate for my winter. I shall soon be in flight to the Sierras or Oregon.

I seem to give up hope of ever seeing you calm again. Don’t grind too hard at those Sacramento mills. Remember me to the Doctor and Allie.

Ever yours cordially, JOHN MUIR.

1419 Taylor St., June 5th, 1878.

I’m sorry I did not see you when last in the city. I went over to Oakland, thence to Alameda to spend a week and finish an “article” with our good old Gibbons; but the house was full; then I went to Dr. Strentzel’s, where I remained a week, working a little, resting a good deal and eating many fine cherries. I enjoyed most the white bed in which first I rested after rocking so long in the rushes of the Stockton slough. They all were as kind as ever they could possibly be, and wanted me to stop longer, but I could not find a conscientious excuse for so doing and came away somewhat sore with obligations for stopping so long. Met Mr. and Mrs. Allen there.

Smith has gone this morning to Shasta, taking Helen, and I’m terribly lonesome and homesick and will not try to stand it. Will go to the woods to-morrow. How great are your trials! I wish I could help you. May the Doctor be speedily restored to health.

Cordially yours, JOHN MUIR.

920 Valencia St., April 9th, 1879.

I did not send the pine book to you, because I was using it in rewriting a portion of the California forest article, which will appear in Scribner’s, May or June, and because, before it could have reached you, you were, according to your letter, to be in San Francisco and could then take it with you. It is entitled “Gordon’s Pinetum,” published by Henry G. Bohn, Henrietta St., Covent Garden; Simpkin, Marshall & Co., Stationers, Hall Court; 1875; second edition. It is an “exhaustive” work, very exhausting anyhow, and contains a fine big much of little.

The summit pine of our Sierra is P. albicaulis of Engelmann, and the P. flexilis Torrey, given in this work as a synonym, is a very different tree, growing sparsely on the eastern flank of the Sierra, from Bloody Cañon southward, but very abundant on all the higher basin ranges, and on the Wahsatch and Rocky Mountains.

The orange book is, it seems, another exhaustive work. There is something admirable in the scientific nerve and aplomb manifested in the titles of these swollen volumes. How a tree book can be exhaustive when every species is ever on the wing from one form to another with infinite variety, it is not easy to see.

I haven’t the least idea who Mr. Rexford is, but, if connected with the “Bulletin,” I can probably get the title of his citrus book through Mr. Williams. Will probably see him next Sunday.

The Sunday convention manager offered me a hundred dollars for two lectures on the Yosemite rocks in June. I have not yet agreed to do so, though I probably shall, as I am not going into Colorado this summer.

Excepting a day at San José with Allen, I have hardly been out of my room for weeks, pegging away with my quill and accomplishing little. My last efforts were on the preservation of the Sierra forests, and the wild and trampled conditions of our flora from a bee’s point of view.

I want to spend the greater portion of the season up the Coast, observing ice, and may possibly find my way home in the fall to see my mother.

I wonder if you will really go quietly away South when your office term expires, and rest in the afternoon of your life among your kin and orange leaves, or, unable to get full absolution from official woman’s rights’ unrest, you will fight and squirm till sundown. I’ve seen nothing of you all these fighting years.

I suppose nothing less than an Exhaustive miniature of all the leafy creatures of the globe will satisfy your Pasadena aspirations. You know how little real sympathy I can give in such play-garden schemes. Still, if so inappreciative and unavailable a man as I may be of use at all, let me know.

Ever cordially yours, JOHN MUIR.

San Francisco, June 19th, 1879.