Creator
John Muir
Recipient
Janet [Douglass Moores]
Transcription
Original in possession of Mr. Charles Moores.
Martinez, July 2,1891
My Dear Janet:
I was glad to get your fine spacious all-round-the family letter. We too have had our share of Grippe & things that make pain &trouble even in so good a love-filled world as this. I suppose that through Annie you have heard of the death of Dr. Strantzel. How great the loss only those who have suffered may know. The family is broken like a house torn asunder & half taken away. Little Helen only four years old we feared would follow him with a broken heart. Even now we have to keep her out of the parlor where his portrait hangs for at sight of it without saying a word her eyes fill & for hours or days all our efforts to comfort her are in vain.
Wanda is a big rosy girl & so much like a woman I am frightened &would fain keep her a baby in sweet & sinless babyland. But on a swift flood we are all borne forward & only when I am in the wilderness is this current invisible, where one day, is a thousand years & a thousand years one day.
Last summer I was among the grand crystal glaciers of Alaska & this summer I spent three weeks in the King's River Yosemite - one of my favorite haunts in the old free Sierra times. I am now trying to write about it for the Century & must haggle through the job in some way for the illustrations for the "article" are already made & they are calling for copy.
I also promised a year a go to write two articles on Alaska for the same magazine .but I have a thousand things to think about in caring for these two ranches & have but little time for such work, while writing to me is very hard, for I have no facility in composition & no available vocabulary - only - only invention & imagination. But why should you care to hear this. The weather has been very hot for a week l05[illegible?] to 110[illegible?] & my head swims until horticulture and literature are mixed into rubbish & only ice& Alaska seem clear and significant.
We are all living, or rather melting, together at the Strentzel home now,while my sister Maggie and family & Ed Coe & his friend Arthur Coleman keep the old house. Ed is doing well & growing every way & I hope he will stay with me forever -a terrestial forever.
None of your Indiana birds have yet alighted here on their western flight, but I still hope to see them. Surely they will not be so idiotic as to wait for a sealed and solemn invitation. I must, however, send a note to Katey Graydon for she's so bashful.
We are all well, & some of us venerable, looking like old trees or white mountain tops, etc. -
I saw your friend Emily O. Pelton a week ago. She is very literary& industrious and thin. I had a letter from our good old friend Prof. Butler the other day written at Paris. He is evidently well, merry & oddly speculative as ever, racing round the globe for fun, money, wisdom & exercise.
Now I must quit this & go to my dismal solemn composition.
Remember me to your mother & Aunts Kate & Mina & to the fine man-boys& Sue Ketcham warmly & naturally as though I had been gone from Indiana but a day (for?) I am always your friend,
John Muir
Location
Martinez [Calif.]
Date Original
1891 Jul 2
Source
Original letter dimensions: 26.5 x 20.5 cm.
Recommended Citation
Muir, John, "Letter from John Muir to Janet [Douglass Moores], 1891 Jul 2." (1891). John Muir Correspondence (PDFs). 87.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/87
Resource Identifier
muir07_0197-trans.tif
File Identifier
Reel 07, Image 0197
Collection Identifier
Online finding aid for the microform version of the John Muir Correspondence http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0w1031nc
Copyright Status
Copyrighted
Copyright Statement
The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust. To purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish or exhibit them, click here to view the Holt-Atherton Special Collections policies.
Owning Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Copyright Holder
Muir-Hanna Trust
Copyright Date
1984
Pages
2 pages
Keywords
Environmentalist, naturalist, travel, conservation, national parks, John Muir, Yosemite, California, history, correspondence, letters
