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Show 543 simply by sympathizing with it and entering as much as possible into its life." Not that he thought boys should make pets of wild animals or birds. In an anecdote about caged skylarks in Scotland, he remembered how pitiful it was to look at the "imprisoned soarer of the heavens." Any boy's conscience would require that the bird be set free. He seemed to disregard flagrantly the very distinction he had once made between wild sheep and tame. And perhaps one must remember that Muir was writing a children's book. The stories which seemed to be aimed at reminding young boys to be good to animals, and allow them as much freedom as possible, were also aimed at the freedom of the boys, who needed to run in the woods, instead of being caged in schools, churches, and front parlors. Muir attempted to trace his own progress, as he was first like an imprisoned bird, then served as a beast of burden in Wisconsin, and finally freed himself from the leash and ran free. He learned the meaning of freedom by observing the conditions of the wild and domestic animals that surrounded him in Scotland and Wisconsin. But the stories came out sounding simplistic, and after a while, repetitive. In fact the structure of the book grew out of its peculiar method of composition. E.H. Harriman insisted that Muir planned and brooded too much, and enforced upon him an unnatural strategy. He made Muir dictate his memoirs to a personal secretary, while a guest at the Pelican Bay Lodge, at Klamath Lake, Oregon. The so-called "Pelican Bay Manuscript" was a long, rambling, disjointed manuscript, though Muir thought it |