The Days of a Man ^1889 



vaded by the strange fascination of its spouting 

 springs. A mighty mass of not wholly cooled lava 

 which buried to a great depth the former topographic 

 features of the region, it shows all the conceivable 

 phenomena which superheated steam can produce. 

 Among these are the highly varied geysers and hot 

 springs, and the resultant decomposition, bleaching, 

 and coloring of the cliffs. Of the geysers we most 

 enjoyed Old Faithful, which then exploded regularly 

 on the hour, never varying a minute and never 

 missing a shot. 



"Story of But for a description of the thousand charms we 

 daily encountered the reader must look elsewhere. 

 In "The Story of a Strange Land," 1 I tried to do 

 the park some slight justice, and in our formal report 

 to the United States Fish Commission may be found 

 the record of what we saw and the problems we 

 tried to solve. 



During our investigations we had the sympathetic 



help of Captain Boutelle. In one of our friendly 



talks he showed me the first preliminary circular of 



Stanford University, which I had not then seen. 



A curious In the course of a conversation as to what such an 



f"~ . institution might accomplish, entering on its work, 



shadowing . i > i 11 111 



as it would, with ample endowment and absolute 

 freedom from tradition, the Captain said: "If 

 Governor Stanford puts you in charge, I'll send my 

 boy Henry right away" neither of us dreaming, 

 of course, that anything of the sort would happen. 

 As a matter of fact, however, two years later I found 

 myself president of Stanford University, with Henry 

 a member of the freshman class. Afterward, when 

 the Spanish War called eighty-seven of our students 



1 "Science Sketches," second edition. A. C. McClurg & Co., 1894. 



C 338 3 



