Letter from John Muir to Janet [Douglass Moores], 1891 Jul 2.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1891
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; correspondence; letters; Douglass; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/87; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/muir-correspondence/article/1086/viewcontent/muir07_0198_md_1.pdf

Original in possession of Mr. Charles Moores. Martinez, July 2,1891My 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 ...