nd then a question, learning something of plant
life, but far more of that spiritual insight into Nature's lore which is
granted only to those who love and woo her in her great outdoor palaces.
But how I anathematized my short-sighted foolishness for having as a
student at old Wooster shirked botany for the "more important" studies
of language and metaphysics. For here was a man whose natural science
had a thorough technical basis, while the superstructure was built of
"lively stones," and was itself a living temple of love!

With all his boyish enthusiasm, Muir was a most painstaking student; and
any unsolved question lay upon his mind like a personal grievance until
it was settled to his full understanding. One plant after another, with
its sand-covered roots, went into his pockets, his handkerchief and the
"full" of his shirt, until he was bulbing and sprouting all over, and
could carry no more. He was taking them to the boat to analyze and
compare at leisure. Then he began to requisition my receptacles. I stood
it while he stuffed my pockets, but rebelled when he tried to poke the
prickly, scratchy things inside my shirt. I had not yet attained that
sublime indifference to physical comfort, that Nirvana of passivity,
that Muir had found.

Hours had passed in this entrancing work and we were progressing upwards
but slowly. We were on the southeastern slope of the mountain, and the
sun was still staring at us from a cloudless sky. Suddenly we were in
the shadow as we worked around a spur of rock. Muir looked up, startled.
Then he jammed home his last handful of plants, and hastened up to
where I stood.

"Man!" he said, "I was forgetting. We'll have to hurry now or we'll miss
it, we'll miss it."

"Miss what?" I asked.

"The jewel of the day," he answered; "the sight of the sunset from the
top."

Then Muir began to _slide_ up that mountain. I had been with mountain
climbers before, but never one like him. A deer-lope over the smoother
slopes, a sure instinct for the easiest way into a rocky fortress, an
instant and unerring attack, a serpent-glide up the steep; eye, hand and
foot all connected dynamically; with no appearance of weight to his
body--as though he had Stockton's negative gravity machine strapped on
his back.

Fifteen years of enthusiastic study among the Sierras had given him the
same pre-eminence over the ordinary climber as the Big Horn of the
Rockies shows over the Cotswold. It was only by exert