OCR Text |
Show Muir's Work H IT Is said that anpinvestigation of the late John 1H Muir's effects brings to light that he left ma- H terlal enough to make several volumes. If this H is true and the right man pan be obtained to rout IH them in proper form, they will be a real con- H tiibution to the world's literature. The. dagger IB is that the thought behind the compilations will SI be to prepare something out of which a syndicate JB (B J H ( can make a fortune, through tho binding, with H just enough of Muir within tho covers to give H ; the books a Muir flavor. H The man to compile them should be a scholar H like Muir, with a gift of language and magnetism H' like Muir's, and with his taste, and such a rev H erence for Muir that ho would reject anything H which In his "soul ho would realize that Muir H would reject were he alivo and engaged in the H work of compiling. One volume, prepared that H j way, and bound in simple form, would be worth H ' a dozen Morocco and gold covers padded within H with a dreary waste of commercially prepared B words with the soul of John .Muir leached out of B B Muir was the most perfect child of nature B endowed with a gift of expressing in words what B he Baw and felt, that the world has any record H B But little of what he wrote has found its way flj into print, but the charm of it is of the kind that B never flags, and it would be better to leave his H fame with that little than to have it soiled by a M bungler. But the world is hungry for all that m he really wrote, for he was, indeed, an inter- H preter of nature to man; nature in the way she m framed the world; in the way she marshals her M storms; in the sublime plan of her seasons; in M the way she embossed her history on the rocks; M in the pictures she painted that man in watching H them might know there was a God; in the way m she prepared to feed her birds and animals and B to prepa're her world for a home for man; a M home so endowed that when man should com- H prehend its blessings and its loveliness he could K not help but bo thankful. H Muir wove all this into simple language; but H ho tinged his words with tints of sunbeams, tho m blooms of wild flowers, wove into them, the rythm H of the songs of joyous birds and the murmur H of the pines when the winds come a wooing them H and all is intoned by the love of God. Be care- H ful that no bungler attempts to put in form his H manuscript. |