Letter from C[harles] S[prague] Sargent to John Muir, 1899 Mar 13.

ARNOLD ARBORETUM,HARVARD UNIVERSITY.Jamaica plain, Mass,.........March 13,...............1899.My dear Muir:The mail has just brought me yours of the 8th and I hasten to congratulate you on the termination of the grippy condition of your family. It has been a horrid winter, I believe, for every one and I rejoice that it is nearly over. Massachusetts, however, is not California in March, and we are still enjoying east winds, slush, melting snow, mud and all the other horrors of our spring.Your Oak was duly received and seemed to us at the time to be Quercus Garryana, but who can tell much about an Oak-tree from such specimens, certainly I cannot.I am very pleased and contented at what you write about The Silva. Few people, I fancy, can realize the difficulty of such a work, and there is no one in the United States whose praise for it I so much value as yours. I am glad if the reading of it seems smooth for the gathering of the facts and putting them in shape was anything but easy. You certainly are the only fellow who knows the trees and lover them enough to properly review such a book, and I await with impatience your essay in The Atlantic.I am going to Washington for two or three days the middle of April to a meeting of the Academy, to make a little change for Mrs. Sargent after our long hard winter, and then about the 1st of May Canby02552 ARNOLD ARBORETUM.and I will, I hope, start for Atlanta, Rome, Chattanooga, etc., for another Crataegus hunt. This ought not to take more than a couple of weeks. What a pity you cannot be with us! If I do not have better luck in finding out what I want to know about the Cypress tree of Mendocino County than I have had so far from correspondence with Purdy and Miss Eastwood, you may see me in California next summer and, if you do, we will certainly have another glorious time together.I suppose this supplementary volume, which is giving me a good deal of trouble, will practically occupy the rest of this year. After that I shall be all right for China, Manchuria, India, Mexico, or any other part of the world where trees grow which I have not seen.Always faithfully yours,[illegible] John Muir, Esq.Martinez, cal