Graydon, Katharine Merrill, Page 1

JOHS MUIR By Katharine Merrill Oraydon While the goldseekers of *49 were risking their perilous way by land and by sea to California, there came to our Middle west a Scotchman with his little son of eleven years, this lad, too, was bound for the great Golden State, though years and toil and travel were to intervene. Knowing nothing of the Old \u27World taut his own birthplace in the land of brown heather, the little stranger wandered with unspeakable delight over his father\u27s acres in unploughed, untrodden, undeseorated Wisconsin. Suoh vastnoss, suoh color, such glory, he had never dreamed of. Here were tall, widespreading, awful trees; flowers that had been growing through hundreds - through thousands - of springs and summers, unseen by any but the wild eyes of savages and the heavenly eyes of angels, and unmolested by herds or flocks or raen. Xo the amazed, enraptured boy it was Paradise. \u27Ihe top and the bottom of society are alike self-indxalgent, If not alike luxurious. It is not from these unfortunate classes that great men usually come, nor did the parents of John Muir belong to either of these classes. Like the parents of Burns ami of Garlyle, they were intelligent, upright, pious, duly observant of the laws of earth and heaven, with will and strength for steady toll. John Muir*s Bother, Anne Oilrye, was a representative ^cotch woman, quiet, conservative, affectionate, fond of poetry and painting* His father, Daniel Muir, was a nan fflf marked character, impetuous, enthusiastic, full of fiery energy, fond of adventure and new enterprise, while his whole life was controlled and kept in a steady glow with the religion of the Old Covenanters. In the Wisconsin wilderness the adventurous father and mother, with their eight children, applied themselves with relentless vigor to the work bf creating a farcj, - chopping, grubbing, fencing, burning brush, plowing, sowing, even the of 02 3https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1153/thumbnail.jp