re may heal and cheer and give strength to body
and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the
little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium
slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily
gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical
gardens, and in our magnificent National parks--the Yellowstone,
Yosemite, Sequoia, etc.--Nature's sublime wonderlands, the admiration
and joy of the world. Nevertheless, like anything else worth while, from
the very beginning, however well guarded, they have always been subject
to attack by despoiling gainseekers and mischief-makers of every degree
from Satan to Senators, eagerly trying to make everything immediately
and selfishly commercial, with schemes disguised in smug-smiling
philanthropy, industriously, shampiously crying, "Conservation,
conservation, panutilization," that man and beast may be fed and the
dear Nation made great. Thus long ago a few enterprising merchants
utilized the Jerusalem temple as a place of business instead of a place
of prayer, changing money, buying and selling cattle and sheep and
doves; and earlier still, the first forest reservation, including only
one tree, was likewise despoiled. Ever since the establishment of the
Yosemite National Park, strife has been going on around its borders and
I suppose this will go on as part of the universal battle between right
and wrong, however much its boundaries may be shorn, or its wild beauty
destroyed.

The first application to the Government by the San Francisco Supervisors
for the commercial use of Lake Eleanor and the Hetch Hetchy Valley was
made in 1903, and on December 22nd of that year it was denied by the
Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Hitchcock, who truthfully said:

Presumably the Yosemite National Park was created such by law because
within its boundaries, inclusive alike of its beautiful small lakes,
like Eleanor, and its majestic wonders, like Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite
Valley. It is the aggregation of such natural scenic features that makes
the Yosemite Park a wonderland which the Congress of the United States
sought by law to reserve for all coming time as nearly as practicable
in the condition fashioned by the hand of the Creator--a worthy object
of national pride and a source of healthful pleasure and rest for the
thousands of people who may annually sojourn there during the heated
months.

In 1907 when Mr.