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Galloway, Cecelia, Page 6
No full text-6- There were all sorts of curious aad interesting things to be found on that hillside, fey uncle tried to explain them to me, aad what the glaciers had done there, but I was too little to comprehend. It was only after I grew older that I began to understand. % mother had always loved curious stones, and beside the front steps she had a collection of them around a raised bed in which grew a tall white lily, and which had beea found In various places on the farm. My uncle was looking at them one day, and his attention was attracted to a large round stone which looked as if it had been worn smooth by the action of water, when he took it in his hand it seemed very light for its size, aad he said it must be hollow. He broke it open, and It was filled with golden-yellow crystals in hexagonal form. He said It was a geode. It must have been then that I began to realise tho beauty and wonder of stones, a love that has never left me. But bye-aad-bye my uncle went away on one of his long botanizing tours, and 1 grew up as little girls do. I didn\u27t see him again for a long time. John Muir was my mother\u27s brother. Her name was Sarah Muir. They were born ia Dunbar, Scotland, a windy little city on tho eraggy coast of the North Sea, Dunbar has had its share of history and romance. It is only a few miles from Edinburgh, which Is surely the most romantic city in the world. Utay of the H-rand and glorious and terribla and bloody deeds en the OfJdfhttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1138/thumbnail.jp
Galloway, Cecelia, Page 16
No full text•16- with his long and arduous fight which was finally instrumental in having many forest reserves created, set apart, and protected from destruction* Any fool can destroy trees, he said* They cannot rua away. It took more than three thousand years to iaake some of these trees in these Western woods. Through all the wonderful eventful centuries since Christ\u27s time,, and long before that, Cod has cared for these trees* saved them from drouth, disease, avalanche, and a thousand straining leveling tempests and floods* But He cannot save them from fools. Only Uncle Sam cab do that. John Muir was nipt only a very clever inventor, and a famous naturalist and geologist, but he was a charming writer, He had the gift of tongues. He was a thin, plain, modest, retiring, unassuming man, with gentle voice and maaaer, fine gray eyes, and curling brown hair and beard, which later turned gray. To look at him you :\u27Mhttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1148/thumbnail.jp
Galloway, Cecelia, Page 9
No full text-9- of uncles and aunts and cousins used to gather at Grandmother Muir\u27s house for Christmas. *nd I remember us all gathered around the wonderful Christmas tree in the parlor while Grandfather Muir told us all about Christmas, and what it meant, and. took the gifts from the tree and handed them around to us with appropriate remarks.. I recall him as a tall thin man, with blue eyes, and bearded face. my Grandmother isinir lived with us for a great many years, and died at our house in. 1896. I remember her as a tall, straight, handsome old lady, with a smooth serene face. She had a very mild gentle disposition, and she went about the house quietly, always placid and smiling. She read a great deal, and possessed a quiet wit aad humor, as most Scotch people do. She had her own rooms and her flowers and her friends. She was a devout Presbyterian, and attended the Presbyterian Church ia our little town of Portage, liseonsin, with great regularity up to the time of her death, looking placid and serene in her black silk dress and her long fur coat. When my Grandfather Muir decided to come to America he brought with him my mother, Sarah, then a little girl of thirteen, and ray uncles John and David, little boys of eleven aad nine. My Grandmother remained in Dunbar with the other children until a house should be built to reoeive them. They came directly to Wisconsin, then a new and unsettled country, and my Grandfather acquired land in what is now known as Marquette County. There they built a log cabin uatil my Grandfather could haul the lumber ,: ■ .https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1141/thumbnail.jp
Galloway, Cecelia, Page 4
No full text=,, ., Ia the deep woods was a great rock standing solitary and alone among the tall trees. One side of it was abruptly perpendicular, but the other side was easy to cliffib, and on the top was a flat place where we could sit and eat our lunch. It was something of a curiosity, for there were no rocks like that anywhere in the neighborhood. How it got there nobody knew. My uncle said the glaciers must have brought it down in the ancient days from sonewhere far in the north, and had left it stranded alone ia our woods. All around its base were ferns and vlo?/ers. That was the forest primeval. The woods had never been touched by white man, and the trees were tall and old and stately. But the Indians may have known it in the old days, for we used to sometimes pick up arrow heads in the fields round about, and up on the top of the hill at the edge of the woods was an Indian mound in the shape of a heart, with a circle of trees growing around it. My mother would never let anyone cut down those trees. In the dark heart of the woods was a spring in the bottom of what my uncle calles a pot-hole, made by the glaciers. There was a cold little pool there that had no inlet and no outlet, but was always full of cold water. Around its edge were reeds and cat-tails and blackberry vines, and on the steep sides sloping down to the pool were tall royal osmundii ferns almos|| as high as my head, tier above tier looking down at the little pool like people sitting at a theater. That fern-bordered pool was a curiosity, too, with its never-failing spring bubbling up • ■ (https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1136/thumbnail.jp
Galloway, Cecelia, Page 3
No full text-3— oaks in the world there were never two exactly alike. All the trees remember John Muir, for he had a real affection and love for them. To him they had their own personalities and individualities, and to ma they also have to this day. He taught me the names of all the wild flowers that grew there, too, and he admonished m to always call thorn by their right names. For how would you like to be called by a aame that didn\u27t belong to you? he said. He was especially interested in the great variety of wild orchids that grew on that farm,- the rose pogoaia, the calopogaa, the ladies* tresses, the rose-colored arethusa, and the cypripediams or lady slippers as we called them, pink and yellow, which grew In great profusion ia the meadows* And there was one colony of tall stately pink and white lady slippers which grew ia the deep shady woods by the creek, and which I kept hidden from everyone. My uncle said I must never pick them , for they were very rare in that locality, and must be allowed to grow undisturbed. They grew out of a carpet of mosses aad little ferns by the side of a fallen tree. I had a little wild flower garden in a place whleh I called my own, where grew many varieties of wild violets,- birds-foot yellow ones, several white ones, blue ones, and the beautiful * violets. I also had anemones, hepatioas, bloodroot, valerian, wild geraniums, Jack-la-the-pulpit, aad one pink lady slipper which I. tended with great care aad porsuaded to grow for me. Sometimes my uncle and I brought home something from the woods to ilant in my garden. e\u3e93S? . - \u27https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1135/thumbnail.jp
Galloway, Cecelia, Page 2
No full text-2- paper. He said he hoped they would not c^ll me Patrickina, and fortunately they did not. He gave ae the first book I ever had, a wonderful book about birds. I remember It had colored pictures, aad I thought it the most beautiful book ia the world. I read it over aad over till I almost knew it by heart. Ie did not have many books in those days. John Muir loved the birds, as everyone knows who has read his story of the water ouzel. 1 remember him sitting on the side ver&nda of our house ia Portage, Wisconsin, watching the birds coming to eat the berries on the big mulberry tree, some of them must have come a long distance,- orioles, rose-breasted grosbeaks, and once we were delighted to see a scarlet tanager, a shy strange bird to make Its appearance in the city. They came every year when the berries were ripe. It was my uncle who first t&ught me to love the trees. I was a small girl when he told me the names of the trees that grew oa my father\u27s Wisconsin farm, the oaks, elms, maples, hickories, aad the butternuts. He explained that each tree was different from its neighbors, Just as people are different from one another, aad that like people they each have their own traiJss aad whims aad peculiarities. He told me about the differeat kinds of oaks,- the white oaks, the red oaks, the black oaks, the burr oaks, and the live oaks. He explained la language a little girl could understand that they were cousins to one another, aad he said that of all the leaves on all the 093Whttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1134/thumbnail.jp
Galloway, Cecelia, Page 8
No full text—8— I,iy Great-Grandfather Hair was a Scotchman, but my Great-Grandmother was English. Their son Daniel, John Hair\u27s father and my Granofather, was born in 1804 in Winchester, England. He left home whenhttps://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1140/thumbnail.jp
Galloway, Cecelia, Page 5
No full text— «J— from somewhere deep under the ground. My uncle said if one could go down deep enough they would find glacial lee still remaialag there, the slow melting of which formed the spring and the pool. John Muir must have loved chlldrea, for I tagged at his heels through the woods aad the marsh and the meadows of that fern like a little puppy. 1 learaed about the birds aad the squirrels aad the chipmunks, and the woodchack that sometimes sat at the door of his house ia the stone wall by the red clover field, aad once we saw a fox. It looked at us in startled surprise for a moment, and slipped out of si^ht as silently as It came. There was a sandy gravelly hillside ia one of oar pastures on which grew blue lupines aad white clover aad big patches of birds-foot violets. There were wild strawberries growlag there, too, aad oaoe we found a whip-poor-will\u27s nest with brown speckled eggs in it. It wasn\u27t much of a aest, just a little hollow in the sand aad gravel, and the mother bird and the eggs were almost the same color as the ground. I almost stepped on the bird before she flew out from under my feet, aad ran away drags-lag h«r wings as if I had hurt her. But my uacle told me she w^s just ■ pretending, to draw me away from her nest. But the great attractioa of that gravelly hillside was the many curious things we fouad there among the gravel; petrified shells, far away from any water; a fragment of metallic stuff which ray uacle told me had beea thrown off from a passing meteor at some time; red. and white striped oaraeliaas; a moonstone; a fragmoat of a broken goods lined with purple amethyst crystals. 093 f/https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1137/thumbnail.jp
Galloway, Cecelia, Page 7
No full text\u3e?.:, stormy tumultuous history of Scotland happened in and around Dunbar. There is perhaps no other country where a thousand years can seem so much like nothing, and the legends of Dunbar are lost in the dim traditions that go back more than a thousand years. what is left of Dunbar Castle stands on a high rooky point that juts out into the sea; a mass of ruined masonry, where John Muir climbed and played and dreamed when a little boy. The Castle dates back nearly a thousaad years, and is more closely connected with ^ueea Mary than even Holyrood. In the old days everything happened, teen murdered, and pillaged, and burned, aad fought, and loved, But nothing happens in Scotland any more, and the land is filled with ghosts and shadows that go walking up and down. The Earls of Dunbar were mighty nobles ia their day, but their power vanished centuries ago. Unhappy Mary went to lay her lovely head on the block at Potheringay. And the old Castle that had looked oa the whole long tragic history of Scotland lies a shapeless mass of stones. How there is nothing left but ghosts and memories. \u27■ It was here that my mother and my uncle were born, Reald it be strange to think that all these things had an influence upon their youthful imagination? The very air they breathed was full of tragedy and romance. The p-round they walked on had been trodden by countless unhappy feet. iSven the stones had their histories. (■\u27\u27:■■,https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1139/thumbnail.jp
Galloway, Cecelia, Page 17
No full text•17* his God whom lie adored, who followed at his heels all day, and slept at his feet at night, Tho brave little dog who shared with him one of his most terrible experiences on the great Muir Glacier in Alaska, John .wuir didn\u27t want to write. He disliked the nechanical part of it.9 shut up in a house, writing laboriously in longhand, When ha first began his studies at never bad any intention of writing, but for years his friends had been urging him to write and give to the world the results of his studies. So finally, at thefr insistence, he began to vpnithis voluminous notes la shape, and to write. He wrote first for the San Francisco papers, and the Overland Monthly, and later for the Century, Atlantic, Scribuers, axid other magazines* Then he began on his books, anci although he wrote several he never got through, for he was still writing on his TravelsWh Alaska and had several planned and, blocked out when he died* One of my mother\u27s treasures was the old quill pen with which ho wrote la longhand every word of his first book, and which he said was made from the wing feather of an eagle, which I picked on Mount Hoffman, back a few miles from Yosemite. What could be more fitting and appropriate than that such a book by such a man should have been written with a pen made from an Eagle\u27s pinion? For they breathe the very wild breath of the mountains, the rocks, the forests, and the glaciers of the High Sierras. He was a very affectionate man. The circumstances of my life have wrought many changes in me, he wrote my mother once. But ,\u27https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmr-all/1149/thumbnail.jp
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