use the accompanying pictures of this home he charged me to be sure and say that the gun leaning against the big chimney-jamb is not his. During all his thirteen years' sojourn in the wilderness he never used such a thing. He lived among the birds and the beasts, but he did not kill his neighbors. A bag containing bread he carried over one shoulder. A packet of tea and an alcohol lamp traveled in one pocket. These constituted his provision in the food line. A little melted snow gave him water for his tea, the bread satisfied hunger. His bill of fare seldom

men would regard his life, even when toasting and working beside the hospitable fire that used to roar up the great chimney, as that of a sybarite. The world owes a great deal to that little hut on the edge of the glacier. People do not pilgrimage to it, as they do to the place where Thoreau's cabin stood beside Walden Pond,-its site marked by an evergrowing heap of stones reared by visitors; but it is as pleasant to think of Mr Muir's tiny house with its big warm heart, up there in the ice, as it is to remember Walden.

varied during his long, hard tramps. He had to travel light. There were seasons when, so arduous were his labors, that he could not carry on his climbing tramps even the thin half-blanket which on more luxurious journeys he sometimes took with him. Then he was wont to make a blanket of the soft snow, hollowing out a bed from its white depths, in which, with feet toward his camp-fire, he slept the sleep of weariness.

In his glacier-bound storm-nest, however, he took his ease, or what he was pleased to consider his ease, though few

I was reminded of Mr. Muir's remarks about the gun when, some time ago, Yone Noguchi, telling me of his home and friends in far-away Japan, said, "My father has never heard any sound of gun." Noguchi is about the only one left to us of our hermit writers. He is still upon his hill-top, mooning among the redwoods, and there I visited him recently. He saw me from afar, as I did him, but instead of coming to meet me he fled to his cabin, hastily closing the door after him. I stood without and laughed, knowing full well the cause of his panic, until,

recognizing me from the window, he threw open the door and came forth with outstretched hands.

"Excuse me!" he cried, "I thought it was people!"

How well-I understood him; for I, too, have lived, for my own comfort, " far from the madding crowd," and well I knew the type of mind that takes its corporeal encasement to seek out the abodes of those who have fled the presence of just such as it. I remember passing one day, with some friends, Joaquin Miller's house on "The Heights." In the pathway before the door stood two women, and at one side of the house two men were standing, peeping in at the window.

"He

"He's shut the door," one of the women said, as we drew near. does n't want us to see him."

when returning to my house, after a tramp about the hills, I found my door locked. I was not in the habit of locking it, so I knew some one must be within, and I knocked, demanding admittance. After a considerable interval the latch was lifted and a man who stood in the doorway regarded me severely.

"Well," he said, at last, as I was too astonished to volunteer any remark, "what's wanted?"

"I wondered who was in my house," I suggested, meekly, and glancing past him I saw a group of perhaps half-adozen people seated about my table, eat

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ing. Oh," the man said, with a most dégagé air, "it was so windy outside, we sought shelter while we ate our luncheon."

Much abashed, I apologized for my intrusion and went and sat in the grove until, their meal finished, my guests took their departure; and so effectual is the power of sheer impudence that I was actually too stunned, until it was too late

him to try a hazard of new fortunes beyond the Rockies. He came down to the level some time ago to tell us of an enthusiastic letter he had just received from the East.

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Come to New York," this letter urged. "It is the place of all places for you. We'll give you a boom; you really ought to come."

His distress over the advice would have been funny had it not been so genuine.

"Must I go?" he asked me. "Ought I to go? I love life here in California. I have no thought even to go to my Japan again. I can work here; I can grow here. Why should I go to the East and be given 'a boom? What is this thing, to be given a boom'? Is it not to hurt the work?"

The boy was wise, and returned to his refuge in the hills. Some day, beyond a peradventure, we shall hear what the hills

On Jackass Flat, not far from Jimtown-the Jamestown of modern elegance, but Jimtown, still, to the men who knew it in the days of '49-stands, halfhidden among friendly old trees, a cabin long since fallen into picturesque decay, but around which linger still some of the richest literary associations of early California. Here dwelt, so tradition declares, that loquacious friend of Bret Harte, "Truthful James" of Stanislaus, whose real name was Geless. Here, too, so the oldest inhabitants declare, Bret Harte himself sojourned for a season. could never, however, have been a hermit from choice; of that we may be certain. He was always, to the sound heart of him, urban and cosmopolitan. But it is pleasant to think that the old cabin may at some time have been his shelter. This whole region is closely associated with a large part of his work. From Carquinez

Harte