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Circa Date
1887
Transcription
105
He was particular about his beds & no dog had better ones, for the woods down to the tide line are not simply carpeted with mosses but richly plashed with them so that all the ground was a bed fresher & finer than any king could buy of fluffy down & silk. Only [small] sticks & roots woven into the yellow fronds had to be avoided. A hollow at the foot of a tree between bulging roots was the favorite place. Not too damp where he curled up comfortably himself like a little boss of moss swelled up over a boulder.
He was an adventurous swimmer as much at home on the waves as a seal
He had a most delicate trembling sensibility & his apparent dullness in presence of ordinary danger I learned came not from mental blindness but from clear insight & there was no lacking of fire in him & firm endurance with occasion required
Excess of joy danger of dying from
Vague eyes trapped in his own thoughts, whatever they might be
Broad heavy boom of the main storm float overhead was split & slivered among the trees & angles of the ice-cliffs into a 1000 wild tones
What are you taking that wisp of a dog for. This trip is not for such a feeble nobodies better leave him with the children. He’ll freeze
106
# The ordinary “moving accidents by flood & field” he met with stoic calm nor did he mind the stings & arrows of outrageous weather. On many a wide ramble I have seen him tired for he patiently followed me over rocks logs forest tangles & glaciers seemingly weariless & silent as a shadow. His small legs had lots of go in them. Trotted lithely like a fox.
Nobody could call him bright, comical cheering or handsome Indians wants in a small dog. Yet there was a brilliant vivacity of soul & intelligence in him for all his outer dullness & on the great trial day he out preached all other dogs & his master also [in] the Good Gospel of God’s universal love & the oneness of all his creatures vertical & horizontal
□ Every animals life is an emblem of every mans & their hopes & fears pains & enjoyments differ only in degree like the divine love in which we all live
The main expression of eyes was quiet harmless cunning
Capable of swift decision
And he might for all we know have a purpose reaching beyond the storm & the dog as well as I
Know little of his antecedents but his education lay lightly but this one trait must have come from the wilderness. A voice direct from Nature’s heart
Had a soul to dare & suffer & triumph
Resource Identifier
MuirReel33 Notebook01 Img055.Jpeg
Contributing Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
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