Here, Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to John Muir, the prominent outdoorsman and founder of the Sierra Club, and a longtime fan of Emerson’s work. The two met when Emerson visited Yosemite in 1871. He urges Muir to visit the east coast—to take a break from wilderness explorations “in [his] mountain tabernacle,” and return to society.
Concord
5 February 1872
My dear Muir,
Here lie your significant Cedar flowers on my table, & in another letter; & I will procrastinate no longer. That singular disease of deferring, which kills all my designs, has left a pair of books brought home to send you months & months ago, still covering their inches on my cabinet, & the letter & letters which should have accompanied to utter my thanks & lively remembrance, are either unwritten or lost,—so I will send this peccavi, as a sign of remorse. I have been far from unthankful,—I have everywhere testified to my friends, who should also be yours, my happiness in finding you,—the right man in the right place,—in your mountain tabernacle,—& have expected when your guardian angels would pronounce that your probation & sequestration in the solitudes & snows had reached their term, & you were to bring your ripe fruits so rare & precious into waiting Society. I trust you have also had, ere this, your own signals from the upper powers. I know that Society in the lump, admired at a distance, shrinks & dissolves, when approached, into impracticable or uninteresting individuals; but always with a reserve of a few unspoiled good men, who really give it its halo in the distance. And there are drawbacks also to Solitude, who is a sublime mistress, but an intolerable wife. So I pray you to bring to an early close /your/ absolute contract with any yet unvisited glaciers or volcanoes, roll up your drawings, herbariums & poems, & come to the Atlantic coast. Here in Cambridge Dr. Gray is at home, & Agassiz will doubtless be, after a month or two, returned from Tierra del Fuego,—perhaps through /St/ Francisco,—or you can come with him. At all events, on your arrival, which I assume as certain, you must find your way to this village, & my house. & when you are tired of our dwarf surroundings, I will show you better people.
With kindest regards yours,
R.W. Emerson
From The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 10. Emerson, Ralph Waldo and Eleanor M. Tilton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.