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JOHN MUIR AND THE ALASKA BOOK 

 By Marion Randall Parsons 



In November, 191 2, not long after his return from his last 

 long journey across South America and Africa, Mr. Muir came 

 to Berkeley to begin work on his Alaska notes. For a month he 

 worked at my home with a stenographer, getting an exact 

 transcription of the journals. The travel-worn, weather-stained 

 little books carried on those memorable exploring trips of near- 

 ly forty years before were crammed with sketches and volum- 

 inous notes, jotted down perhaps in the canoe, or around the 

 camp-fire, but oftenest in the solitudes of the great glaciers in 

 whose study he cheerfully underwent so much cold and hunger 

 and hardship. 



It was most amusing to watch Mr. Muir at work. His intense 

 interest in his subject led him to make many a long digression 

 as his notes brought this or that incident to mind. Time meant 

 nothing to him. Household machinery might stop, food grow 

 cold on the table, and the business members of the family miss 

 their morning trains while Mr. Muir pursued the tranquil 

 course of his subject to the end. And so for an hour or more he 

 might discourse while the stenographer sat with her hands 

 folded. Her stolidity and indifference exasperated him beyond 

 measure. To have no curiosity about the "terrestrial manifesta- 

 tions of God," above all to have no interest in glaciers, was to 

 him both incomprehensible and sinful. 



Once started on a task Mr. Muir was a tireless worker. The 

 book in hand might have lain fallow for thirty years, but when 

 it began to take form and substance he was all afire with eager- 

 ness to see it finished. Long evenings he spent poring over the 

 notebooks or drawing from them the texts of the monologues 

 he delighted in. His mind, indeed, dwelt with such complete 

 absorption on his work that his conversation nearly always in- 

 dicated its trend. His speech had all the beauty of phrase, the 

 force and vigor of style of his written word, but with an added 

 spell of fire and enthusiasm and glowing vitality that made it 



