Letter from John Muir to [Jeanne C. Carr], [1872 Spring].

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1872
• Subjects: John Muir; correspondence; letters; author; writing; naturalist; California; correspondent; mail; message; post; exchange of letters; missive; notes; epistle; Canada; Carr; Emerson; glacier*
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/10160; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmcl/article/35093/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

Letter #69[Letter copied from typewritten, bound set, as this letter is missing in mounted series of letters to Mrs. Carr]To Mrs. Ezra S. Carr[Spring, 1872] [First portion of letter cut from page]upward into light to the very heart of the sun and downward miles deep among Holy Ghosts of glaciers and seas of mountain domes.[ First part of the letter missing.]. I had a letter from Emerson. He judges me and my loose drifting voyages as kindly as yourself. The compliments of you two are enough to spoil one, but I fancy that he, like you, considers that I am so mountain-tanned and storm-beaten I may bear it. I owe all of my best friends to you. A prophecy in this letter of Emerson's recalled one of yours sent me when growing at the bottom of a mossy maple hollow in the Canada woods-—that I would one day be with you, Doctor,and Priest in Yosemite. Emerson prophesies in similar dialect that I will one day go to him and "better men" in New England, or something to that effect. I feel like objecting in popular slang that I can't see it. I shall indeed go gladly to the "Atlantic Coast" as he prophesies, but only to see him and the Glacier ghosts of the North. Runkle wants to make a teacher of me, but I have been too long wild, too befogged and befogged to burn well in their patent, high heated, educational furnaces.I had a good letter from LeConte. He evidently doesn't [know] what to think of the huge lumps of ice that I sent him. I don't wonder at his cautious withholding of judgment. When my mountain mother first told me the tale I could hardly dare to believe either, and kept saying "what?" like a child half awake.Farewell. My love to the Doctor and the boys. I hope the Doctor will run away from his enormous bundles of duty and rest a summer with the mountains. I have a great deal to ask him. I have begun to build my cabin. You will have a home in Yosemite.Ever thine, J. Muir https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/35093/thumbnail.jpg