Book Review 



The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, by John Muir. Houghton, 

 Mifflin Co., 294 pages, price $2.00. 



John Muir has long been known as one of our most appreciative 

 nature writers. This story of his boyhood and youth is a valuable 

 accession to our list of biographies of eminent naturalists, and it is 

 an inspiring bit of personal history as well. 



Bom in Scotland, he early came to this country and settled in 

 Wisconsin where his father had taken up a farm. He was sent to 

 school before he was three years old, and even before this he had 

 learned his letters from the shop signs. His recollections of these 

 early school days are recollections of the stories of the readers. 

 Along with the school lessons his father taught him hymns and 

 bible verses. He well remembers earning a penny for learning 

 "Rock of Ages." He was skilful in games and took part in all of 

 the boyish sports; delighted in dog fights and went through the 

 customary quota of boyish escapades. As a boy he knew the 

 animal life of the sea, near which he lived, hunted birds' nests 

 among the cliffs and through the meadows. ** Kings may be 

 blessed; we were glorious, we were free, school cares and scoldings, 

 heart thrashings and flesh thrashings alike, were forgotten in the 

 fullness of Nature's glad wildness. These were my first excursions, 

 the beginnings of lifelong wanderings." 



If the new world was full of delight for this boy who loved the 

 out of doors, it was also full of toughening farm work, and moral 

 instruction that was decisive and severe according to the good old 

 Scotch notions. The Wisconsin farm was in those days a paradise 

 for a nature lover and his description of his boyhood experiences 

 is fascinating reading. 



He was an inventive youngster and with his jack-knife made a 

 clock for the household. He also manufactured a thermometer. 

 ''The scale was so large that the big black hand on the white 

 painted dial could be seen distinctly and the temperatiire read 

 while we were ploughing in the field below the house." It was 

 some of his machines that won him entrance to the State Univer- 

 sity, where he remained for four years earning his way and boarding 

 himself. He had a clock of his own manufacture rigged in his 

 room so that at the proper time it started the mechanism that stood 

 his bed upright and forced him to get up. He also had a desk 



