118 
into the San Joaquin Valley, he found it 
everywhere glowing with beautiful flow- 
ers. Men with their cattle had not yet 
broken into this garden of Nature to 
such a degree as to devastate it, and to 
push out of existence scores of plant- 
genera. He would le down in his track 
at night and look up at a luminous and 
friendly sky through a canopy of Mari- 
posa lilies. Making his way across the 
great plain and up along the Merced 
River, he found himself after a few days 
on the brink of Yosemite. What fol- 
lowed is told in My First Summer in 
the Sierra. Equally interesting would 
have been his account of his first winter 
there. Someone employed him to build 
a sawmill and to cut lumber, so that 
within a few months he had earned, as 
he once told me, enough money to last 
him for the next fifteen years. 
Then began the series of patient hardy 
explorations of which his books and arti- 
cles are but a fragmentary record. More 
than once, during the last year of his life 
(which no one thought of as the last!), 
I urged him to continue the autobiog- 
raphy which he seemed to have dropped 
just at the outset of his real career. His 
answer was that the writing would re- 
quire another lifetime. Possibly he may 
have felt that whatever he wrote was in 
the best sense autobiographical; it is 
indeed peculiarly true of his writings 
that they bear the stamp of his character. 
Then, too, he detested the drudgery of 
composition. Whenever I went to see 
him, he was doggedly at work upon some 
literary task; the Scot in him kept him 
forever at it, although not forbidding 
him the luxury of an occasional lament. 
I am sure his writings have cost him 
more groans by far than all the hard- 
ships incident to his explorations. 
than a fortnight before the unforeseen 
end, going up as usual through the lonely 
house without the ceremony of knock- 
Less 
THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
ing, I found him sitting before the fire at 
work upon his typewritten manuscript. 
Showing me the new bookshelves he had 
had made since my previous visit, he 
said, upon my congratulating him on the 
orderly state of his library, which for 
years had been lying in dusty heaps and 
tiers along the floor: “I am going to 
begin buying books now.” — “ What,” 
I could not help saying, “do you expect 
to do much reading?” — “O yes”; and 
then with a sigh, “If I only had not so 
much writing to do!’”? — 
He always appeared eager to put 
everything aside for the sake of a long 
talk. After the marriage of his daugh- 
ters he lived alone in the old mansion, 
which stands on a mounded knoll rising 
from amid the narrow alluvial valley of 
Alhambra. He took his meals at the 
neighboring house where his elder daugh- 
ter with her husband and growing fam- 
ily lives, and was otherwise cared for by 
a faithful old Chinaman who had been in 
This 
old gardener was a man of deeds, not 
his employ for some thirty years. 
words. Orders were received in silence, 
and did the master wish to assure him- 
self that an order was understood, the 
reply would be: “Too muchee talk!” — 
In thirty years the taciturn fellow had 
pot learned thirty words of English. 
For all his inward resources, and not- 
withstanding the pleasure he took in the 
family of his daughter, perhaps Muir 
had moments of loneliness. Whenever 
I wrote asking permission to visit him 
for a day, he would telepbone or tele- 
graph that I should come soon and stay 
as long as possible. 
Searcely would the guests be seated, 
when Muir would begin, as if thinking 
aloud, pouring forth a stream of remi- 
niscence, description, exposition, all re- 
lieved with quiet humor, seasoned with 
pungent satire, starred and rainbowed 
with poetic fancy. What would one not 
