Letter from John Muir to [Sarah Muir Galloway], 1870 Mar 24.

[4]of course I am glad to hear from you in the solitude & I thank you for the daisy & the rose leaf & the old legend I will tell you all a- bout the Yosemite & many other places when I reach home-The surpassing glory of a place like this ex- plains the beauty of that is written in smaller charact- ers like that of your Moundhill Remember me to all my friends especially to your own good man & wee ones & I am yours in haste JM00500[1] Yosemite Valley March 24th 70Dear Sister, A great event has occurred in our remote snow bound valley Indian Tom has come from the open lower world with the mail bringing yours of Jan\u27 30 Davids of Feb 8th Dan\u27s of Feb\u27 & Mothers of Feb 26th etc I wrote you some weeks ago from this place Tom leaves the valley tomorrow I have four letters to write this evening & it is nearly nine o\u27clock so I will not try to write much but will just say a few things in haste, First of all let me say that though my lot in these years is to wander in foreign lands my heart is at home I still feel you all as the chief [2]wealth of my [illegible] souls & the most necessary elements of my life what if many a river runs between us. distance ought not to separate us, Comets that leave thin sun for long irregular journeys through the fields of the sky acknowledge as constant & controlly a sympathy with its great centre as the nearer more civilized stars that travel the more proper roads of steady circles. No one re- flection gives me so much comfort as the completeness & unity of our family. An apparently short column of years has made men & women of us all & as I wrote to David, we stand united like a family clump of trees-May the divine power of family love keep us one & now do not consider me absent, lost-I have but[3]gone out a little distance to look at the Lords gardens Remember me very warmly to Mrs Galloway Tell her that I sympathize very keenly with her in her great affliction Tell her that my eyes open every day upon the noblest works of God & that I would gladly lend her my own eyes if I could I think of her very often I was telling my friend here about her a few nights ago in our little shanty I do not live near the Yosemite but in it-in the very grandest warmest centre of it. I wish you could hear the falls tonight-they speak a most glorious language & I hear them easily through the thin walls of our cabi