of the towering Sequoia Gigantiae. To this the president promptly agreed. The manager of the party was let into the secret, and he left them what was needed. I remarked to him that an event like that, alone in confidential chat with the president of the United States, in such sublime surroundings, was something long to be remembered. "Oh, yes," said I, "Did you sleep much?" "No, not very much." "Then you did a lot of talking?" "Well, I did the most of it." "What was it about?" "Oh! I stuffed him pretty well regarding the timber thieves, and the destructive work of the lumbermen, and other spoilers of our forests." "How did he take it?" "Well, he did not say much, but I know and so do you, how he went for them afterwards."

While it was a good time for quiet conversation, it was also a grand opportunity for great meditations. The towering majesty of the great trees, as enhanced by the fire light, and their immense age, as proven by Muir's count of the rings of one that is fallen, show them to be as he says "respectable saplings when Adam was young." They are undoubtedly the oldest and the largest living things in the world.

John Muir held a doubtful attitude to what is called spiritualistic phenomena, telepathy and such occult beliefs as are enlisting the attention of psychologists so largely at the present time; yet there occurred with him a remarkable presentiment, vision or dream, whatever one may call it, relating to the death of his father.

It was near the last of June, 1896, when he gave me the narration direct. The occurrence and his father's death were in the same month. He told it quite circumstantially, but the details are not well remembered. However, one night in the earlier half of the month he had a very vivid striking dream regarding his father, seeing him in bed, and likely to die. He was strongly impressed with the idea that he must go to his old Wisconsin home at once, and began getting ready. The following night he had much the same vision. His older brother, David, was then living in California, John went to him, and told him he had the most certain impression that their father would die about as soon as they could get to see

him. David made light of his premonitions, but finally concluded, since John was surely going, and at the best his father might not live much longer, that he would go with him, and they started at once. At Omaha, Nebraska, where their younger brother, Dan, resided they stopped off and soon persuaded him to accompany them. They arrived in Portage City, Wisconsin, and in time to have a recognition and some conversation with their father and a day or two afterwards he passed away. John did not regard this as a chance dream, but a real presentiment.

The only thing approaching that in my experience, was in the town of Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada, forty-five years ago. One summer morning about eight o'clock, a farmer, while plowing in his field two miles from the town, was fatally shot by a man in ambush. That very time I was at work in a shop, and was suddenly impressed with the mental sight of a crouching man firing a gun at another man. I was just as much startled as if I had heard the report. I turned around and said, "Somebody is shot." I would have regarded it as a freak of the imagination, had not my sister come in a half hour afterwards and related the occurrence, having gotten the news direct from the messenger who came in on horseback for a doctor.

On his return journey, John Muir notified me that he would be at our Union Station at a given time, and requested me to meet him, which I did most cheerfully. After the greeting he apologized for taking me from my work to meet him, saying he never could trust himself in the cities, they were man's arbitrary building without any intelligible common plan. "But," said he, "you might put me down in any dark valley in God's mountains and I could soon find my way out. If you come across a man's face in the dark and feel his nose, you know where to find his mouth." On the street cars going to our home he told me the story of the presentiment regarding his father, which I have given, regarding it as extraordinary. He remained with us about twenty-four hours. The children greatly enjoyed his talk. None of us retired till midnight. Mother and I were complimented on our family. "See those

fine big boys of yours, and I have no boys. They are scarce with the Muirs, there may not be enough to carry the name."

He left us to join a commission in Chicago, appointed by President Cleveland, on forest reservations to be made in different parts of the United States. This occupied his attention for a year or more, and was the subject of his largest and best book.

Well, his day is past, but his story is not told. A life so full of great service cannot be fully told. No one knows it all, except it be himself and his Creator. It is all finished and in the great record, and he passes on with the closing. One of his Eastern literary friends sublimely pictures this in three magnificent stanzas. Though we might criticise the phrasing, the imaginative sweep overpowers us, except the last three lines which approach the common place. Chas. L. Edson of the New York Evening Mail is the poetic author. He makes a characteristic answer for John when he says: "John o' the mountains says, 'I knew'." That is, I have been watching, I have seen it.

John o' the mountains, wonderful John,
Is past the summit and traveling on;
The turn of the trail on the mountain side,
A smile and "Hail" where the glaciers slide,
A streak of red where the condors ride,
And John is over the Great Divide.

John o' the mountains camps today
On a level spot by the milky way;
And God is telling him how he rolled
The smoking earth from the iron mold,

And hammered the mountains till they were cold,
And planted the redwood trees of old.

And John o' the mountains says: "I knew,
And I wanted to grapple the hand o' you;
And now we're sure to be friends and chums
And camp together till chaos comes."

From Collier's Weekly, January 16, 1915.

Collier's editor continues, "Of course, John Muir and God are friends. Muir fraternized with the birds of the field and forest, and chummed with the squirrel and the bear. He rhapsodized over the beauty and sweetness of the flowers, and communed with God through the redwoods and pines. His life was a glorification of God's original handiwork."

John was familiar with his Bible, God's revealed will, as well as nature's book. It was his child study and was ingrained in his mental make-up as his writings abundantly testify.

We must now reluctantly part from our friend and his story and again resume the family narration.

TROUT & JAY BUSINESS CLOSED UP

Besides the family references, in Muir's and our own story, but little of note had occurred. Father had spent one winter in very serious sickness. Just previous to this time, Charles Jay and my brother Peter had put in a winter term at the High School in Owen Sound. Now, after our mill was burned, it was deemed best to separate. Each one to make the best possible shift for himself. As C. H. Jay had been in charge of the business end of our firm, he was left at home to settle up accounts, and also made another settlement with the Laycocks, by which we retained the millsite. Oil had been discovered at Oil Springs and Petrolia, a year or more previous, and thither people were flocking as if there were gold mines. To the original property holders it was as good as a gold mine; and possibly the same to a few sharp speculators. Many of the operators at first made good money, only to encounter great loss afterwards, unless they were able to hold out till steady prices obtained.

I headed for Oil Springs by way of Toronto, and since I was only about twenty miles away from the residence of my sweetheart, Miss Jennie B. Knowles, at Dunbarton, Pickering, I determined to make the short journey east and and see her. As we were not then engaged I had some anxiety to know the state of her mind toward me, after the adverse change in my financial condition. This proved to be all right, and, though

at the bottom of my poverty, I proposed. While I got only a postponement, it was an encouraging one, which in due time came out all right.

OIL SPRINGS VENTURE

At Toronto resided my two next younger brothers, Edward and John. Both were married and held responsible positions in the Leader newspaper office, and had made good acquaintanceships with some of the leading business men of the city. I was introduced to two of them, and my Oil Springs prospect presented. They seemed to read me pretty thoroughly, and cautioned me to lay off my modesty; that I would no doubt be good at once for any demands made upon me; and I would soon come to it. This was needed and I profited by it, for when arriving at Oil Springs I soon found good employment in a machine shop though not a well-trained machinist.

This Oil Springs experience was like a new beginning for me. I was among strangers. Nearly two-thirds of the operators and half the working men were Americans. Mostly from the new oil districts of Pennsylvania. New people and interesting new conditions prevented loneliness. Still there was abundant time for meditation. Full thirty-two years of my life had passed and I was seemingly only a beginner. I saw that it would be better to leave business alone. The ability to earn good living wages, while working for other people, and the freedom from anxiety, connected with such a course, along with my distaste for business, and my relish in the study and practice of mechanics, determined me to be an employee, rather than an employer. But at that time I was not properly prepared to judge. Excepting while working for father I always had the self-direction of my work as well as that of other people. I did not then know what it was to be under the inconsiderate direction of a meanly disposed boss who had no decent regard for common human rights. Just a little taste of this sort inclined me for a time to reverse this decision, as will be seen by our further experience.

After being in Oil Springs about six weeks, my partner, C. H. Jay, also came, like myself to work independently, as