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Circa Date
1887
Transcription
47
taken them places with man in all his hopes & fears in this world & in the next
# I had long felt in a dim uncertain way we were all one, flowing from one fountain flu, children of one Father. It has frequently happened to me that after long study of a dim question light has shone suddenly when least expected or looked for. So in this case. & how blind we are to all our animal neighbors the real lives of them. How dull. Indians & children rough backwoodsmen & poets know most – are best blended. Nature has to all but kill us to get plain simple lessons into us.
# We had bread & rain for breakfast that morning [& what may have been lacking was made up by] wh [which] with health & enthusiasm answered well enough & left us [free] to enjoy[ing] the grand inventions of God
He lifted up his small voice & howled with his unshakable conviction [with heaviness of heart] that he could never never no never cross that slippery narrow bridge mildly stubborn at first, then excitedly so though his mind seemed [to be] clear as ice wit & nerve alive to tips of every hair
There is no estimating or balancing what wit or wisdom lies latent in our lower relations until made manifest by some great experience seemed conscious of the dawn of some wondrous good fortune
48
Dying (in (a deep crevasse entombed) in ice would at least be quick & clean (death. Compared with wh [which] even cremation is less pure & sweet
[His heart] grew faint at his first look into the gulf. Made heart grow faint
A descendent of much mongrelized ancestors that helped the Indians to hunt & carry from these many wild qualities were gathered
Fantastic fitful gayety – persistent vagabond
Could see a few Islands like huge whales head & tail under water immense back protruding emerging
He passed the days curled up in some hollow of the baggage in sluggish ease, motionless & unobserving as a hibernating marmot But knew when we were going to land by our talk then look out to see what kind of place we were coming to. Then first to land leaping overboard, then into the woods hunting small game. at once a wild animal
# He came out of his bed that wild morning, ate what I offered & ventured after me into the storm with dull dumb courage without visible reluctance & plainly showed that he meant to go with me thinking perhaps I was going a hunting. I advised him to go back to bed
Resource Identifier
MuirReel33 Notebook01 Img026.Jpeg
Contributing Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
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