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THE SPELL OF THE YOSEMITE 
I 
OSEMITE won my heart at once, as it seems 
to win the hearts of all who visit it. In my 
case many things helped to do it, but I am sure a 
robin, the first I had seen since leaving home, did 
his part. He struck the right note, he brought the 
scene home to me, he supplied the link of association. 
There he was, running over the grass or perching 
on the fence, or singing from a tree-top in the old 
familiar way. Where the robin is at home, there at 
home am I. But many other things helped to win 
my heart to the Yosemite — the whole character of 
the scene, not only its beauty and sublimity, but the 
air of peace and protection, and of homelike seclu- 
sion that pervades it; the charm of a nook, a retreat, 
combined with the power and grandeur of nature 
in her sternest moods. 
After passing from the hotel at El Portal along 
the foaming and roaring Merced River, and amid 
the tumbled confusion of enormous granite bould- 
ers shaken down from the cliffs above, you cross the 
threshold of the great valley as into some vast house 
or hall carved out of the mountains, and at once feel 
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