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Los Angeles, Cal., June 1, 1910. 325 West Adams Street. My dear Mr. Browne: - Good luck and congratulations on the Dial's thirtieth anniversary, and so Scottishly and well I learned to know you two summers ago, with blessed John Burroughs & Co., that I seem to have known you always. I was surprised to get a long letter from Miss Barus written at Seattle, and in writing to Mr. Burroughs later I proposed to him that he follow to this side of the continent and build a new Slabsides "where rolls the Oregon," and write more bird and bee books instead of his new-fangled Catskill Silurean and Devonian geology on which he at present seems to have gane gite, clean gite, having apparently forgotten that there is a single bird or bee in the sky. I also proposed that in his ripe mellow autumnal age he go with me to the basin of the Amazon for new ideas, and also to South Africa and Madagascar, where he might see something that would bring his early bird and bee days to mind. I have been hidden down here in Los Angeles for a month or two and have managed to get off a little book to Houghton Mifflin, which they propose to bring out as soon as possible. It is entitled "My First Summer in the Sierra." I also have another book nearly ready, made up of a lot of animal stories for boys, drawn from my experiences as a boy in Scotland and in the wild oak openings of
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Wisconsin. I have also re-written the autobiographical notes dictated at Harriman's Pelican Lodge on Klamath Lake two years ago, but that seems to be an endless job and, if completed at all, will require many a year. Next month I mean to try to bring together a lot of Yosemite material into a handbook for travelers, which ought to have been written long ago. So you see I am fairly busy, and precious few trips will I be able to make this summer, although I took Professor Osborn and family into the Yosemite for a few days, and Mr. Hooker and his party on a short trip to the Grand Canyon. Are you coming west this year? It would be delightful to see you once more. I often think of the misery of Mr. Burroughs and his physician caused by our revels in Burn's poems, reciting verse about in the resonant board chamber whose walls transmitted every one of the blessed words to the sleepy and unwilling ears of John, much to the distress of Miss Barus. Fun to us, but death and broken slumbers to Oom John. With all best wishes, my dear Browne, and many warmly cherished memories, I am, Ever faithfully your friend, John Muir
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Francis F. Browne, Editor, The Dial, Fine Arts Bldg., 203 Michigan Blvd., Chicago, Ill. From John Muir, Martinez, Cal.
