Letter from C[harles] S[prague] Sargent to John Muir, 1900 May 28.

ARNOLD ARBORETUM HARVARD.UNIVERSITYJamaica Plain, Mass, February 13, 1900My dear Muir:I am delighted to get your letter of the 21st. Your letters always oheer and inspire me and I wish I could get more of them. I wish, too, I could go to California this summer and see the Redwoods again hut I must stay at home and do some hard work between now and the middle of September when I suppose I must start forth again to hunt for Crataegus. I shall certainly be able to throw a good deal of light on the genus before I get done with it but it is giving me a lot of bother and anxiety. Still I suppose I might as well do that as anything else, it is all in a lifetime. Why don\u27t you arrange to pass the autumn in the east? I will show you a country you haven\u27t seen before and I am sure it will do us both good to have a trip together again.It is a glorious season and everything is blooming like mad In my remembrance there has never been such a year before and the country is simply beautiful.I am very keen about a Redwood reservation. Half a dozen rich men might get together and buy two or three hundred thousand acres and never feel it. This I think is what we ought to work for and I am putting out a few hints which may or may not produce results. This it seems to me is a thing well worth fighting for. Is there anything better that you and I can accomplish than the preservation[02696] ARNOLD ARBORETUM. 2 of some of these noble trees?I have made a contract with Houghton, Mifflin & Company for The new tree book and Faxon has been hard at work on the illustrations for the last three months. It will take him, I suppose, a couple of years to make the six hundred drawings. They are going to be beauties and I hope the book will prove useful. I have got lots of other schemes on hand but [illegible] sadly lacking in time and strength to do all I ought to accomplish during the next ten years.Write often to your faithful friend,[illegible]John Muir, Esq.Martinez, Cal.[02696