open the window?"

"That will just suit me." And he threw the sash, which came down to
the floor, all the way up, making an opening like a doorway. The night
was cold, but neither of us suffered from the abundance of fresh air.

The caretaker of the building was a big Swede called Andy. In the
morning Andy said that beat him: "There was the President of the
United States sleeping in that room, with the window open to the
floor, and not so much as one soldier outside on guard."

The President had counted much on seeing the bears that in summer
board at the Fountain Hotel, but they were not yet out of their dens.
We saw the track of only one, and he was not making for the hotel. At
all the formations where the geysers are, the ground was bare over a
large area. I even saw a wild flower--an early buttercup, not an inch
high--in bloom. This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the
Rockies. It is the only fragrant buttercup I know.

CAPTURING A MOUSE

As we were riding along in our big sleigh toward the Fountain Hotel,
the President suddenly jumped out, and, with his soft hat as a shield
to his hand, captured a mouse that was running along over the ground
near us. He wanted it for Dr. Merriam, on the chance that it might be
a new species. While we all went fishing in the afternoon, the
President skinned his mouse, and prepared the pelt to be sent to
Washington. It was done as neatly as a professed taxidermist would
have done it. This was the only game the President killed in the Park.
In relating the incident to a reporter while I was in Spokane, the
thought occurred to me, Suppose he changes that _u_ to an _o_, and
makes the President capture a moose, what a pickle I shall be in! Is
it anything more than ordinary newspaper enterprise to turn a mouse
into a moose? But, luckily for me, no such metamorphosis happened to
that little mouse. It turned out not to be a new species, as it should
have been, but a species new to the Park.

I caught trout that afternoon, on the edge of steaming pools in the
Madison River, that seemed to my hand almost blood-warm. I suppose
they found better feeding where the water was warm. On the table they
did not compare with our Eastern brook trout.

I was pleased to be told at one of the hotels that they had kalsomined
some of the rooms with material from one of the devil's paint-pots. It
imparted a soft, delicate, pinkish tint, not at all suggestive of
things satanic.

THE MOUNTA