Letters to a Friend 



As for Le Conte's Glaciers, they will not hurt 

 mine, but hereafter I will say my thoughts to 

 the public in any kind of words I chance to com 

 mand, for I am sure that they will be better 

 expressed in this way than in any second-hand 

 hash, however able. Oftentimes when I am 

 free in the wilds I discover some rare beauty 

 in lake or cataract or mountain form and in 

 stantly seek to sketch it with my pencil, but 

 the drawing is always enormously unlike the 

 reality. So also in word sketches of the same 

 beauties that are so living, so loving, so filled 

 with warm God, there is the same infinite 

 shortcoming. The few hard words make but 

 a skeleton, fleshless, heartless, and when you 

 read, the dead, bony words rattle in one's 

 teeth. Yet I will not the less endeavor to do my 

 poor best, believing that even these dead bone- 

 heaps called articles will occasionally contain 

 hints to some living souls who know how to 

 find them. 



I have not received Dr. Stebbins' letter. Give 

 him and all my friends love from me. I sent 

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