134 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



delivered by Mr. Alexander McAdie, Vice-President of the 

 Sierra Club. He spoke as follows : 



"Ladies and Gentlemen: I am sorry that the President of the 

 Club, Mr. John Muir, is not here to honor the occasion and pay 

 a lasting tribute to the genius of his fellow-countryman. He is 

 on his way to South America ; but I feel .sure he would want me 

 to express his regret at not being present; and to say that we 

 feel his spirit is present on this occasion. 



"If you offer a Scotsman a sprig of heather, he at once unbends. 

 It matters not how repressed and self-contained he may have 

 been before, he now becomes gracious, genial and, if the thing 

 were possible for a Scot, loquacious. He recognizes in the token, 

 evidence of a kinship of feeling; he knows that the things he 

 has been taught to hold precious will be likewise dear to you. 

 Something of the same kind happens when a stranger speaks 

 well of the fog in the presence of a San Franciscan. For these 

 dwellers in the Bay valleys love their fog and he who speaks 

 kindly of it, when so many disparage, wins at once a way to 

 their affection. And as no one ever wrote more charmingly of 

 the sea-fogs than Robert Louis Stevenson, it goes without saying 

 that he is dear to the people who live near the Great Gate where 

 rolls the fog in stately strength and beauty. 



"You will recall one never-to-be-forgotten morning here at Sil- 

 verado when the fog rolled in. In two jumps he was out of 

 bed and on the platform : 'Far away,' he says, 'were hill-tops 

 like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about the foot of 

 precipices and poured into all the coves of these rough mountains. 

 The color of that fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. 

 For an instant among the Hebrides and just about sun-down, I 

 have seen something like it on the sea itself. But the white was 

 not so opaline, nor was there, what surprisingly increased the 

 effect, that breathless, crystal stillness over all. Even in its gen- 

 tlest moods, the salt sea travails, moaning among the weeds or 

 lisping on the sands ; but that vast ocean of fog lay in a trance 

 of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble with a 

 sound.' 



"Stevenson came naturally by his love of the mists, clouds and 

 fogs and all out-of-doors life. He was born in that 

 " 'Land of brown heath and shaggy wood. 

 Land of the mountain and the flood. . . . ' 

 and his fellow townsman, Sir Walter might have added 

 " 'Land of engineers and much east wind.' 

 "Our fogs were kinder to Stevenson than the fogs of his native 

 land; and perhaps if he could have remained here under some- 

 what more favorable conditions, his health would have been 



