Letters to a Friend, Written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, 1866-1879

Transcriber’s Note:
Inconsistencies in punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling—such as “Snelling” and “Snellings”, hardworking and hard-drinking—were left as printed in the original text. The inconsistent use of italics—as in “Linnæa” and “ Linnæa ”—was retained as printed in the original.
Written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr 1866—1879
By John Muir
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY WANDA MUIR HANNA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THIS EDITION CONSISTS OF 300 COPIES
When John Muir was a student in the University of Wisconsin he was a frequent caller at the house of Dr. Ezra S. Carr. The kindness shown him there, and especially the sympathy which Mrs. Carr, as a botanist and a lover of nature, felt in the young man’s interests and aims, led to the formation of a lasting friendship. He regarded Mrs. Carr, indeed, as his “spiritual mother,” and his letters to her in later years are the outpourings of a sensitive spirit to one who he felt thoroughly understood and sympathized with him. These letters are therefore peculiarly revealing of their writer’s personality. Most of them were written from the Yosemite Valley, and they give a good notion of the life Muir led there, sheep-herding, guiding, and tending a sawmill at intervals to earn his daily bread, but devoting his real self to an ardent scientific study of glacial geology and a joyous and reverent communion with Nature.
“The Hollow,” January 21, 1866.
Your last, written in the delicious quiet of a Sabbath in the country, has been received and read a good many times. I was interested with the description you draw of your sermon. You speak of such services like one who appreciated and relished them. But although the page of Nature is so replete with divine truth, it is silent concerning the fall of man and the wonders of Redeeming Love. Might she not have been made to speak as clearly and eloquently of these things as she now does of the character and attributes of God? It may be a bad symptom, but I will confess that I take more intense delight from reading the power and goodness of God from “the things which are made” than from the Bible. The two books, however, harmonize beautifully, and contain enough of divine truth for the study of all eternity. It is so much easier for us to employ our faculties upon these beautiful tangible forms than to exercise a simple, humble living faith such as you so well describe as enabling us to reach out joyfully into the future to expect what is promised as a thing of to-morrow.