right; close up your ranks!'"

He was ill when it was read. A week from the day of the meeting the
happy, well-loved man breathed his last.

JOHN MUIR

John Muir, naturalist, enthusiast, writer, glorifier of the Sierras, is
held in affectionate memory the world over, but especially in
California, where he was known as a delightful personality. Real
pleasure and a good understanding of his nature and quality await those
who read of the meeting of Emerson and Muir in the Yosemite in 1871. It
is recorded in their diaries. He was a very rare and versatile man. It
was my good fortune to sit by him at a dinner on his return from Alaska,
where he had studied its glaciers, and had incidentally been honored by
having its most characteristic one named after him. He was tremendously
impressed by the wonder and majesty of what he had seen, but it in no
wise dimmed his enthusiasm for the beauty and glory of the Sierra
Nevada. In speaking of the exquisite loveliness of a mountain meadow he
exclaimed: "I could conceive it no punishment to be staked out for a
thousand years on one of those meadows." His tales of experiences in the
High Sierra, where he spent days alone and unarmed, with nothing but tea
and a few breadcrusts to sustain him, were most thrilling.

I was afterward charmed by his sketch of an adventure with a dog called
"Stickeen," on one of the great Alaskan glaciers, and, meeting him,
urged that he make a little book of it. He was pleased and told me he
had just done it. Late in life he was shocked at what he considered the
desecration of the Hetch-Hetchy Valley by the city of San Francisco,
which sought to dam it and form a great lake that should forever furnish
a supply of water and power. He came to my office to supervise the
publication of the _Sierra Club Bulletin_, and we had a spirited but
friendly discussion of the matter, I being much interested as a
supervisor of the city. As a climax he exclaimed, "Why, if San Francisco
ever gets the Hetch-Hetchy I shall _swear_, even if I am in heaven."

GEORGE HOLMES HOWISON

Among the many beneficent acts of Horatio Stebbins in his distinguished
ministry in San Francisco was his influence in the establishment of the
chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of California. It was the
gift of D.O. Mills, who provided the endowment on the advice of Dr.
Stebbins. The first occupant appointed was Professor Howison, who from
1884 to 1912 happily held a fruitful term.