12 
HELEN ABBOTT MICHAEL 
Park. I was daily enjoying the instructive companionship 
of Cope during the month of our stay and, the company 
having been augmented by several State geologists, we formed 
parties for exploring some of the less frequented parts of the 
Park. Some of us pushed on from the Yellowstone Canon 
across the Mt. Washburn trail to Yancey’s, the petrified for¬ 
est, and amethyst mountain. That expedition was full of ad¬ 
venture, including an encounter with a bear, a snowstorm on 
top of Mt. Washburn, one of the ponies sliding three hundred 
feet down the trail, and a runaway. Our journey later con¬ 
tinued across the plains of Idaho to Utah. Cope had left us 
for a few days to visit the Green River region for specimens. 
He brought me back a perfect specimen of a fossilized fish- 
skeleton. He said it was a most unusual find. 
Our experiences in Salt Lake City were somewhat unique. 
We met quite a number of women who were living in plural 
marriage. Those with whom we spoke seemed generally con¬ 
tent. On the Sunday of our stay we attended services at the 
temple. They included reading from the Old Testament, 
the singing of hymns, preaching, and the participation in a sort 
of a communion, bread being handed around among the con¬ 
gregation. My father had preserved a most reverent attitude 
towards the services, and when the dish of bread was handed 
to him, he took a piece, bowed his head, and proceeded to eat 
it as all the good Mormons were doing. 
Afterwards when we taxed my father with the query if 
he intended to become one of the elders, he did not vigorously 
affirm that he would not. He said, “ Well, you would n’t have 
me refuse the hospitality they had extended to a stranger.” 
The second year I spent at the Medical College, I devoted 
extra time to the dissecting-room, and in order to have an abun¬ 
dance of material, I made arrangements, in addition to my 
dissecting at the Woman’s College, for the evening use of a 
dissecting-table in the Dental College then at Twelfth and 
Filbert streets. The dissecting-room was very thoroughly 
equipped, and from eight until ten o’clock I worked there 
nightly. This institution was so much more accessible to my 
home that I was saved a long, lonely walk which I should 
