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Show 281. between himself, "the wild man" in his first draft, and his friend, "a man of grass and fruit." In this way he could expose the "enormous conceit" which his friend's dogma represented. "Wild Wool" was an unusual essay for Muir since it was a human drama about human values. A man spoke of his conflicts with other men. It was also a humorous piece, filled with Thoreauvian puns. Muir's opening lines called into question the possibility that men might improve or redeem Nature: "Moral improvers have calls to preach. I have a friend who has a call to plow, and woe to the daisy sod or azalea thicket that falls under the savage redemption of his keen steel shares." At first Muir thought he would make this passage more obvious by giving his friend a "divine call to plow, " and saying that the "old man devotes all his days to the destruction of the fine wilderness of his mountain home." Later he decided to characterize this anthropocentric activity as reclamation and subjugation. "Not content with the so-called subjugation of every terrestrial bog, rock, and moorland, he would fain discover some method of reclamation applicable to the ocean and the sky. ..." Because Nature was already claimed and needed no improving, Muir assumed the role of a preacher who wanted to redeem men and improve society. His language bristled with ironies. "Keen steel shares" were hardly a suitable tool for a man who wanted to share Nature's bounty, and "moorland" contained a pun on Muir's name. The zealous farmer might have oeen a sodbuster, like Muir's own father who had wandered from |