10 Astor St., Chicago.Sept. 14, 1906.My Dear Mr. Muir:I have been asked a pleasant courtesy:- to write a letter of introduction to you for my friend Bert. Wentworth,- because it stirs me up to send you a note, and it takes quite a jolt to make me write to anyone. I do not know why I have such a constitutional reluctance to writing, but I have, all the same, and I have now come to be so fully aware of it, that I no longer make apologies.Bert. Wentworth is a fine young fellow whom I have hot seen in years,for his health failed him long ago and he went to the West. He is a manly, sincere fellow, and one I know you will like. He asked me for the letter and hopes soon to be able to meet you.My affairs have been poking along in the usual uneventful way,-not sufficient to keep me really busy and yet enough to hold me here with an occasional business run to some large eastern city, where I have to see oceans of people, who weary me, and not a bit of Cod\u27s real country. My wife, whose health is restored, goes off occasionally to her relatives and I sometimes fetch her home, with a day or two of trout fishing slipped in. Those trips are great, for we splash along in the abandoned rivers of the old pine country in Michigan, where nature is slowly claiming her own again, and one can breath pure air and see the trees and sky.The other day our family doctor, a royally good fellow, ran off for an outing in the Big Horn valley, and we talked over his outfit and preparations. And what fun we had. I could almost live over again the glorious ride I took so long ago with you in the rainy, muddy Yellowstone[illegible]03762 and could smell the camp bread and the frying greasy bacon, those wonderful perversions of good food, and see you sitting on the slippery edge of some mud gyser as the rain pelted down, serenely quoting Bobby Burns\u27 remarks about the hot hereafter and the Deevil , as the mud balls puffed and choked and sputtered back at you. Those pictures of my mind are a part of me.Now I suppose you are sizzling and drying up out on the sandy stretches of Arizona, digging up a monster tree each day and reading the buried secrets of the old ages. How I wish I were with you and that you could see the enthusiasm of my wife, if she were along, and found a newflower or bird. She does not know that country and its weird picturesque ness and romance, and it has always been my regret that she and I could not get you and wander about its mysterious stretches.Father and Mrs. Sellers are well and would join with my wife and me in our best wishes for your well fare, if they knew I was writing.Your most sincerely.[illegible]0376
