Letter from S. Hall Young to John Muir, 1910 Jun 14.

• Main Author: Young, S Hall
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1910
• Subjects: John Muir; correspondence; letters; author; writing; naturalist; California; correspondent; mail; message; post; exchange of letters; missive; notes; epistle; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Yukon; Pacific; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/7378; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmcl/article/32311/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

2large fully understands it. It is the most characteristic name I can think of.I am growing very enthusiastic about this work. The joy of creation is surely the most divine of joys. I cannot hope to approach your exquisite sense of proportion and balance in the construction of sentences, or your keen, sympathetic and minute study of wild nature. My studies will have to be principally of the men in the wilds. But I hope to present these people of the Far North, whom I have learned to love and admire, in their true light. And they cannot be divorced from the scenery in any adequate description of them. I hope to improve in my descriptions of the mountains and rivers of Alaska.I have your "Mountains of California",-the copy you gave me long ago. Fortunately I have always carried it in my trunk on my travels, and so it escaped destruction with the rest of my library which went downwith the Str. Leah to the bottom of the Yukon. I had the best library in Alaska, fifteen hundred choice volumes, besides letters, manuscripts and papers that to me were priceless, but they were all lost, and I was not able to recover a cent of damages.I have also "Stickeen", the finest dog-book ever written, hardly excepting John Brown's "Rab". I have not "Our National Parks" but will get it. I shall look eagerly for the publishing of the others you mention.I have notified my Mission Board of my intention to retire after this church year which expires April 1st, 1911. They have intimated a desire to have me go east this winter for a campaign among the churches. If this plan is carried out I expect to look about for a home somewhere on the Coast this winter, either near Seattle or in Cal. There I will establish my wife, spending my winters there in literary work and most of my summers in Alaska gathering more material. Next summer I hope to spend in the Arctic ocean with my Son-in-law, Capt. F. E. Kleinschmidt, whose recent articles on hunting and other adventures you may have seen in The Pacific Month-04794 ...