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(Muir icon)1913



John Muir Correspondence : 2 fragments


Helen and Wanda Muir

Our little one has come to us and we are all very happy Mother father grandmother and grandfather. She was born three days ago, coming in the warm sundays of the springtime with the full bloom of the fields and orchards and the singing of the birds. Heaven bless the small darling and make all her life as happy as the promise from every quarter is now. She is a tiny happy healthy dainty-featured lassie, cheecks and chine nose and mouth and brow as firmly modelled and composed as if she were in her ripe rosey teens and she looks about her with her bright blue eyes as if eager to know what kind of world she had arrived in.


I'll go with you now. Down here across the little ravine is the best place but we'll go this way first. In this great field is where I've sweated and played worked and rejoiced. There is the garden where Maggie and I have lavished away many joyful hours. And away down this slope and over the level prairie is where we have taken hundreds of long walks and talked of earth and heaven. Now if you are not too tired I'll take you to two places more. Just by that great oak is where in the moonlight evenings I used to spend hours with my head up in sky I roved among the planets and thought. One place more. That "best place" I spoke of that is across this ravine and up the opposite hill a little bit in that thick little grove is where I used to pray.


Muir, John. Unpublished correspondence. Owned by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Archives: SC 185