Letters to a Friend 



be a great, progressive, unlimited man like Dar 

 win and Huxley and Tyndall. I will be most 

 glad to meet him. You are unweariable in your 

 kindness to me, and you helm my fate more 

 than all the world beside. 



I am approaching a kind of fruiting-time in 

 this mountain work and I want very much to 

 see you. All say write, but I don't know how or 

 what, and besides I want to see North and South 

 and the midland basins and the seacoast and 

 all the lake-basins and the canons, also the alps 

 of every country and the continental glaciers 

 of Greenland, before I write the book we have 

 been speaking of; and all this will require a doz 

 en years or twenty, and money. The question 

 is what will I write now, etc. I have learned the 

 alphabet of ice and mountain structure here, 

 and I think I can read fast in other countries. 

 I would let others write what I have read here, 

 but that they make so damnable a hash of it 

 and ruin so glorious a unit. 



I miss the Moores because they were so cor 

 dial and kind to me. Mrs. Moore believes in ice 

 [ 126] 



