THE CONVERSATION OF JOHN MUIR 
give for a phonographic record of those 
wonderful talks! One recalls them as 
one recalls the impressions of travel, or 
the pictures in a gallery, or sweet music 
which one is impotent to reproduce. 
Taking a text from what was uppermost 
in his mind, or from a chance question, 
or from a leaf or pebble or petrifaction, 
he would begin very quietly and with- 
out the slightest hesitation, and would 
soon lead the spellbound listener into the 
inward parts of the subject. Sadly con- 
sidering how little I can recall, I respect 
more than ever the talent of a Boswell. 
Whatever one attempts to reproduce 
seems to fade like those pebbles which 
Emerson brought home from the brook. 
I venture to offer here two imperfect 
snatches of his talk, which I owe to a 
friend who accompanied me to visit 
Muir last August, and who jotted down 
a few notes. Muir rarely referred to 
current events, but some reference to the 
invasion of Belgium brought out the 
following deliverance: 
It all reminds me of an experience of mine 
soon after leaving the University of Wiscon- 
sin. I wanted to go to Florida to see the 
plants down there; so I set out-afoot toward 
the fall of the year. I traveled along the 
western foothills of the Appalachian Moun- 
tains where the people were none too hospita- 
ble. It was just after the War and they were 
distrustful of Northerners. When refused 
shelter I would creep into the thickest brush 
I could find under the large trees. Often 
it would rain, and again it would not be safe 
to light a fire, so that I got pretty chilly by 
morning. Then, when the sun was up, I’d 
crawl into an open, sheltered spot and try to 
get another nap. But I didn’t generally 
sleep long. The people there all keep hogs 
and let them run on the mountainsides to feed 
on the acorns. In order to keep the herd 
together, they throw out a few ears of corn 
in the morning about the cabin, at the same 
time calling the hogs. I’d hear a shout away 
down the valley somewhere, then a crackling 
of the brush all round, and those razorbacks 
would come charging down the hillside right 
through my little camp and right over me, if 
119 
I didn’t look out — snorting and squealing, 
blind and mad to get at that corn. 
And that’s the way with us in these days of 
our modern civilization and automobiles and 
a’ that, rushing pellmell after something and 
never getting anywhere. We imagine if we 
make a big disturbance we’re ‘‘ progressing’”’! 
— Progressing down hill hke the Gadarene 
swine! — 
Much later on in the same conversa- 
tion, he chanced to be speaking with 
humorous indignation, but not unkindly, 
of certain differences he had had with an 
Eastern naturalist, and wound up about 
as follows: 
....But I got the better of him once. A 
number of us, botanists and foresters and 
others, were examining the mountain region of 
Tennessee and North Carolina and on down 
the ridge. The autumn frosts were just be- 
ginning, and the mountains and higher hill- 
tops were gorgeous. My friend and the rest 
were making a little fun of me for my enthusi- 
asm. We climbed slope after slope through 
the trees till we came out on the bare top of 
Grandfather Mountain. There it all lay in 
the sun below us, ridge beyond ridge, each 
with its typical tree-covering and color, all 
blended with the darker shades of the pines 
and the green of the deep valleys.— I 
could n’t hold in, and began to jump about 
and sing and glory in it all. Then I hap- 
pened to look round and catch sight of 
standing there as cool as a rock, with a half 
amused look on his face at me, but never 
saying a word. 
“Why don’t you let yourself out at a sight 
like that?” I said. 
“‘T don’t wear my heart upon my sleeve,” 
he retorted. 
“Who cares where you wear your little 
heart, man?” I eried. ‘‘There you stand 
in the face of all Heaven come down on earth, 
like a critic of the universe, as if to say, 
Come, Nature, bring on the best you have: 
iim from BOSTON! — 
Sallies like these were not infrequent, 
but the main current of his talk was 
deeper and graver. One hobby, upon 
which he would discourse for hours with 
poetic eloquence, interspersed with phi- 
lippics against those chamber geologists 
