34 Sierra Club Bulletin 



an inspiration and never-ending delight. Many a page of this 

 Alaska book is for me a living record of our fireside hours of 

 companionship. 



Not until many months later, however, did I have any close 

 acquaintance with Travels in Alaska. After working on it only 

 a short time, Mr. Muir laid the book aside to take an active 

 part in the fight for Hetch Hetchy. A few weeks after the final 

 defeat a severe illness, from whose effects he never fully recov- 

 ered, again interrupted the book. In his weakened condition the 

 mere sifting out of the enormous mass of material was a task 

 almost beyond his strength. Finding him one day utterly dis- 

 couraged over it, I offered to go to him a day or two each week 

 to help him until he could find the secretary to his mind. The 

 arrangement proved unexpectedly happy and congenial to us 

 both, and lasted until within a week of his death. 



No one unacquainted with Mr. Muir's habits of work and 

 living could appreciate the difficulty, nor, indeed, the humorous 

 nature of the task. He was living alone in the dismantled old 

 home, unused save for his study and sleeping porch. He went to 

 his daughter's home for his meals, but neither she nor anyone 

 else was allowed to touch the study, overflowing as it was with 

 books and papers. Confusion was no word for the state of the 

 manuscripts. He had been collecting material for over thirty 

 years. In the interval that had elapsed since he began real work 

 on it the two typewritten copies of the journals had become 

 mixed, and in some cases both had been revised. Material from 

 certain parts of the journals, moreover, had been used in news- 

 paper letters and again in magazine articles, so as many as five 

 different versions of some passages were in existence. Even 

 had they been collected together and in order, to read and com- 

 pare and reject would have been sufficiently hard, but fresh ver- 

 sions were constantly coming to light, or in my absence Mr. 

 Muir would unearth a copy of some version already disposed of. 

 He was in the habit of making notes on anything that came to 

 hand — an opened envelope, a paper bag, the margin of a news- 

 paper. No scrap of manuscript could ever be destroyed, and 

 I could devise no system of putting the rejected material aside 

 that served to keep him from ''discovering" it at some later 

 date. Finally I took to hiding copied and rejected sheets alike 



