I seem to give up hope of ever seeing you calm again. Don’t grind too hard at those Sacramento mills. Remember me to the Doctor and Allie.
Ever yours cordially,
John Muir.
1419 Taylor St.,
June 5th, 1878.
I’m sorry I did not see you when last in the city. I went over to Oakland, thence to Alameda to spend a week and finish an “article” with our good old Gibbons; but the house was full; then I went to Dr. Strentzel’s, where I remained a week, working a little, resting a good deal and eating many fine cherries. I enjoyed most the white bed in which first I rested after rocking so long in the rushes of the Stockton slough. They all were as kind as ever they could possibly be, and wanted me to stop longer, but I could not find a conscientious excuse for so doing and came away somewhat sore with obligations for stopping so long. Met Mr. and Mrs. Allen there.
Smith has gone this morning to Shasta, taking Helen, and I’m terribly lonesome and homesick and will not try to stand it. Will go to the woods to-morrow. How great are your trials! I wish I could help you. May the Doctor be speedily restored to health.
Cordially yours,
John Muir.
920 Valencia St.,
April 9th, 1879.
I did not send the pine book to you, because I was using it in rewriting a portion of the California forest article, which will appear in Scribner’s, May or June, and because, before it could have reached you, you were, according to your letter, to be in San Francisco and could then take it with you. It is entitled “Gordon’s Pinetum,” published by Henry G. Bohn, Henrietta St., Covent Garden; Simpkin, Marshall & Co., Stationers, Hall Court; 1875; second edition. It is an “exhaustive” work, very exhausting anyhow, and contains a fine big much of little.
The summit pine of our Sierra is P. albicaulis of Engelmann, and the P. flexilis Torrey, given in this work as a synonym, is a very different tree, growing sparsely on the eastern flank of the Sierra, from Bloody Cañon southward, but very abundant on all the higher basin ranges, and on the Wahsatch and Rocky Mountains.
The orange book is, it seems, another exhaustive work. There is something admirable in the scientific nerve and aplomb manifested in the titles of these swollen volumes. How a tree book can be exhaustive when every species is ever on the wing from one form to another with infinite variety, it is not easy to see.