Recollections of John Muir 



17 



these two great souls, looking at the pictures and listening to 

 Muir's talk. 



As his keen gray eye ranged over the pictures stacked in piles 

 all over the place, he would fall upon a big careful objective 

 study of a Sierra landscape. 



"Now there's a real picture, Willie," he would exclaim. "Why 

 don't you paint more like that ?" 



With a look of defiance the big shaggy-haired painter would 

 draw from the stack a mystical dream of live-oaks, with a green 

 and gold sunset sky, and stand it up on an easel with an impa- 

 tient wave of his hand. 



"What are you trying to make of that? You've stood it up- 

 side down, haven't you ?" Muir would sally with a mischievous 

 twinkle. 



And Keith would finally give it up with : 



"There's no use trying to show you pictures, Johnnie." 



But in spite of these little pleasantries, which revealed a 

 fundamentally different approach to nature, the two men had a 

 life-long admiration and friendship for one another. 



Never have I met another man of such singleness of mind in 

 his, devotion to nature as Muir. He lived and moved and had 

 his being as a devotee. He was naturally a recluse, but if he 

 could get a listener, whether of high or low degree, he would 

 talk by the hour of his beloved mistress. It was the passion of 

 his life, the awakening of the dull and circumscribed soul of the 

 average man or woman to the ineffable splendor of the great 

 out-of-doors. 



During the memorable two months of the Harriman Expedi- 

 tion to Alaska, Muir and I were room-mates. He had the ten- 

 der kindliness of a father. Of himself he took little heed, but no 

 zealous missionary ever went abroad to spread the gospel with 

 his fervor in communicating a love of nature. And with him a 

 love of nature meant an understanding of her laws. He has 

 told me that he found it necessary, in getting people to listen, 

 to tell them stories such as his immortal tale of Stickeen, but 

 the real hope in his heart was to awaken their interest so they 

 would want to go to nature themselves and to delve into the 

 mysteries of her ways. 



Our stateroom was filled with "brush" — pine and spruce 



