Wherever
they are solid the idiotic visitor writes his name, and thousands of
these unimprisoned lunatics have been there. Wherever the basins are
most delicate and wonderful, the savage white man strikes them with an
axe and carries home "a specimen." Captain Ludlow found two women
climbing around one geyser called the Castle, from the numerous little
pinnacles and towers it has built up, "with tucked up skirts and rubber
shoes, armed one with an axe, the other with a spade." When he first
saw the Beehive, the most remarkable of the geysers in point of height,
throwing its stream two hundred feet high from a small aperture, he had
a pang in anticipation of the destruction that he felt sure would come
upon it. And with good reason. The next day he returned to camp just in
time to run in and save the Beehive, the pride of the Park, from the
uplifted axe of _a woman_! He urges the Government to spend $10,000 or
thereabouts in protecting this beautiful place from the assaults of
these iconoclasts, who break down ten times as much as they carry off.
We regret to see that his recommendation is unheeded. A governor is
appointed for the Park, but he has no salary, and probably does not
remain on the ground. Captain Ludlow very truly says that the presence
of a small party there to open roads, preserve the Park, and keep a
careful record of the geysers would well repay its cost in the increase
of knowledge and pleasurable travel it would bring to our people.

[15] "_Report of a Reconnaissance to the Yellowstone National
Park in the Summer of 1875._" By WILLIAM LUDLOW, Captain of
Engineers. War Department, Washington.

* * * * *

Mr. David A. Wells has made a good choice in presenting Bastiat's
writings on political economy,[16] for his essays are as sound in
principle as they are homely in method. He tried to make people see the
true meaning of the phrases and theories which are the common staple of
conversation among the industrial classes. For instance, he meets the
assertion that a country gains wealth when the government employs a
great number of people by pointing out that the personal expenditures
of the people are reduced by just the amount of the taxes. When the
government takes a dollar from a citizen to pay a laborer, the citizen
has just one dollar less to hire the laborer for his own use. The
country gains no wealth by such a transaction, but merely makes