Letter from John Muir to [Fay H.] Sellers, 1894 Oct 3.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1894
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; correspondence; letters; glacier; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/6892; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/muir-correspondence/article/8243/viewcontent/muir08_0425.pdf

[1]Martinez, Cal. Oct 3. 1894My dear Mrs. SellersI'm sorry to hear that you have been ill but glad to be able to congratulate you on return to health.The ten portraits came safely in the most perfect package I ever saw. every one of them confortably clad like babies beloved & clad in fine linen.I had no idea how much I was asking when I requested a dozen or I shold never have had the conscience to do it. Many thanks. As for making a frontispiece for the book it is now much too late. The book was out of the hands of the printer two months ago, & will appearMrs. A. H. Sellers3420 Michigan AvenueChicagoIll. [2]in a week. I have not yet seen it & dont know whether it has any portrait in it or not never having said a word on the subject to the publishers. However I have a half dozen more vols to write & this photograph may yet be engraved.This is a popular book & easily read, though a good deal of science lurks in it unseen covered with brush & words. One of the chapters was scientific but by advice of the publishers I took it out, for use in another volume.I have been at the ranch all summer, reading proof, [bossing?] Chinese etc. so comparatively[3]2this has been a barren year not a single glacier in it or piece of wild woods or garden though I have seen the wilderness at times in dreams & have heard the hum of bees in the bryanthus beds on top of the Alaska mountains.The winds in the woods & the boom & crack & roar of avalanches & icebergs on the slopes of the peaks & at the heads of the icy fiords, notwithstanding this summer has been Saharaly hot I have been hibernating--living on the fat of better times like a bear in its denI had a pleasant letter a week or two ago from your friend Rusk of Pasadena in which our charming evenings at your home last summer were lovingly rememberedI often see Keith--& he always [4]says the Sellers days were the best of the trip. He is getting rich selling lots of pictures, & is perhaps a trifle less moony & absurd than ...