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Sierra Club Bulletin 



foundational animal dying out day by day as divine uplifting, 

 transfiguring charity grows in." 



To all who knew John Muir intimately his gentleness and 

 humaneness toward all creatures that shared the world with 

 him, was one of the finest attributes of his character. He was 

 ever looking forward to the time when our wild fellow crea- 

 tures would be granted their indisputable right to a place in the 

 sun. The shy creatures of forest and plain have lost in him an 

 incomparable lover, biographer, and defender. 



John Muir's writings are sure to live — ^by the law that men 

 who lift their eyes at all from the commonplace ideals of work- 

 a-day life will inevitably fix them on the snowy crests of human 

 thought and achievement. Thence it is that they must derive 

 their power to hope and to toil. Long as daisies shall continue 

 to star the fields of Scotland men will choose to see them 

 through the eyes of Burns. Forgotten generations have heard 

 the nightingale sing her love-song at twilight ; but a finer music 

 is in her song since Keats listened to the notes from the thicket 

 on the hill. Nor will the name of Wordsworth ever be dissoci- 

 ated from the warble of the rising lark and the call of the 

 cuckoo across the quiet of rural England. John Muir is of their 

 number. Among those who have won title to remembrance as 

 prophets and interpreters of nature he rises to a moral as well 

 as poetical altitude that will command the admiring attention of 

 men so long as human records shall endure. He had "the eye 

 within the eye." Thousands and thousands, hereafter, who go 

 to the mountains, streams and canons of California will choose 

 to see them through the eyes of John Muir, and they will see 

 more deeply because they see with his eyes. 



But while in a high sense his wisdom has become a part of 

 us forever, his going has left an aching void in the hearts of all 

 lovers of the California mountains. Long accustomed to meet 

 him where wild rivers go singing down the canons, and skyey 

 trails are lost amid cloudy pines, they now must perforce apply 

 to him the simple words which sixteen years ago he wrote on 

 his visit to the grave of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson : ''He 

 had gone to higher Sierras, and, as I fancied, was again waving 

 his hand in friendly recognition." 



