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Show 41. of politics and philanthropy." But Muir knew he was not ready to settle down, and when he commented, "Mrs. Carr, thought I, never lectured thus," he was telling himself and Jeanne Carr something which went deeper than words. He needed her support, needed a broad margin to his life, and he was going to have both. That she provided the kind of support he required, was a mark of her understanding soul. Her letters indicate that she sympathized with him, and served him in ways that he might never have dreamed possible. Not only did she second his views, agreeing that guiding was a distasteful job, but she also began to import society to him. Emerson, William Keith the artist, Asa Gray the Harvard botanist, and many others sought Muir out in the Valley because Jeanne Carr sent them to him. She and her friends also sent books to Muir, in fact the books she had been reading. Thus he continued his academic education as he read Lyell's Principles of Geology, Tyndall's Hours of Exercise in the Alps, Ruskin's books on Mountain Beauty, and undoubtedly many other works which pertained directly to the studies he was pursuing. Jeanne Carr had embarked on a study of evolution when she came to California, and probably Muir began to read Darwin and his commentators seriously at this time. But most important, she reminded him that he was not simply escaping from nineteenth century realities, but was engaged in an attempt to find a place where a man of integrity and sensibility truly belonged. "I have no fixed practical aim, but am living in constant communion with Nature & follow my instincts & am most intensely |