John Muir And The Reporter.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1889
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; pamphlets; journal articles; speeches; writing; annotation; Swett; glacier; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/662; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmb/article/1661/viewcontent/A7.pdf

10 OAKLAND LEDGER. JOHN MUIR AND THE REPORTER. The writer recently visited the home of the explorer of the great Alaska glacier that bears his name, and spent about an hour with him in his study. A second meeting with him was held at the residence of California's famed educator John Swett. Then came a third meeting with Mr. Muir at his lovely home in the Alhambra Valley near Martinez. When I first met John M uir he expressed a horror at meeting newspaper men, and said they were almost a unit in misrepresenting things. I told him that I was not a newspaper man, but an embassador sent out by A. Dal ton, Jr., to gather facts and figures for a special edition of the Contra Costa News. He was glad, he said, to meet a representative of the local press, but he was down on the reporters for the big dailies. He recited an instance in connection with a visit he made to San Francisco, in which a reporter abused his confidence very much. It ran something like this: "Notlong ago," said Mr. Muir, "I thought I would go to San Francisco and engage a room in some hotel where I could finish up some literary work that the publishers were crowding me for. I was very quiet about it and engaged a room at the Grand Hotel, where I felt I was safe from interruption. I have often wondered whether you ever saw any while you were prospecting the glaciers?' "Well, when I come to think it over, I told him that I had seen multitudes of birds of various kinds hovering about the ice, but that I- hadn't paid much attention to them. The young man thanked me for giving him an audience and politely bowed himself out of the room, The next morning I went into a restaurant to get my breakfast and then on my table lay a copy of the Chronicle. About the first thing I noticed was my name in bold black letters. ' Muir the Great Naturalist on Snakes! " '' Then followed a great long heading to over a column of matter about what I should have said on the subject of snakes. I was pretty much put out about it but concluded to let it pass. The next morning the ...