Letter from Joseph Pickard to John Muir, 1901 Feb 15.

[8]doubtless have come to your minds as to mine - He clasps the crags with hooked hands Close to the sun in lonely lands This hardy, daring mountaineer - is John Muir, the Naturalist - now - today - Master of Arts, and a Doctor of Laws, eminent as a Botanist, then Geologist & Meteorologist. - author If introduced now as a Husband and manager of a fruit-ranch, it must still be remembered that he is yet a roving naturalist - for so he writes me. The San Francisco Call says: No man since Thoreau ever had keener sympathy with nature, a quicker vision for her mysteries, or a surer speech for their interpretation than Mr. Muir. Emerson who met Muir in California, and was guided by him through the Yosemite Valley, said - He is more wonderful than Thoreau. [The the interesting & amusing account of your disappointment etc - as recorded in the Atlantic Magazine quoting parts of E\u27s poem - Good bye, proud world [illegible]][9]5.Rubens, it is said, saw every object of Nature with a painter\u27s eye, and instantly caught the predominating feature by which the object is known & distinguished; and as soon as seen he executed it with astonishing facility. We may say of Mr. Muir - he sees with a painter\u27s eye, but does not execute on canvas with a brush & colors. Sketching he does. His is an eye which nothing escapes, of distinguishing feature in form or color - whether wide opened mountain landscape, or of some [smiling?], happy valley; of forest trees, or flowers; of the tip of an ousel\u27s wing, of squirrel tails, or canon [diacritic] gorges. His pictures are in words - superior to the painter\u27s so far as not limited to little squares of canvas, but as presenting a whole gallery in continuity. - As an author his style is as clear as a mountain brook, and sparkling as a dimpling lake upon which sunbeams fall only to be splintered, and shattered into myriads of flashing diamonds. He is never dull. When you read him, you not only see02841https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/39750/thumbnail.jp