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.