OCR Text |
Show 506 of all sorts, and these were not j u s t chance acquaintances, but loyal a l l i e s . P o l i t i c i a n s , businessmen, poets, a r t i s t s, scientists, and even m i n i s t e r s found him an i r r e s i s t i b le talker and a valued friend. Muir, on the other hand, was remarkably t o l e r a n t of t h e i r f r a i l t i e s. This i s not to say t h a t he was a conciliatory sort of person. Muir's r e l a t i o n s h i p with William Keith was notoriously stormy, and even though the two men had great affection and regard for each other, they also frequently disagreed in voluble terms. Likewise, Muir's friendship with John Burroughs was punctuated by disputes and grumblings. Charles Sprague Sargent was perhaps the crankiest of men, yet Muir knew that the love of trees which he shared with Sargent was more important than i r r e l e v a n t day-to-day temperamental differences. Yet Muir could never r e s i s t the lure of a quibble, and he often said things which punctured the egos of his acquaintances in ways which they thought cruel. Muir did_ l i k e to do a l l the t a l k i n g . Burroughs complained that on the Harriman Alaska Expedition, Muir "would not allow the rest of the party to have an opinion on the subject" of glaciers. And when ranger Charlie Leidig t r i e d to l i s t e n in on the conversation between Muir and Roosevelt as they camped near Glacier Point in 1903, he noticed that "some difficulty was encountered because both men wanted to do a l l the talking." fet there was also something disarming about Muir's innocent enthusiasm. Just as Joseph Hooker and Asa Gray had enjoyed teasing Muir in the l a t e seventies because he was "so eternally |