Mr. N.P.  Langford St. Paul, Minn.,

Dear Sir:  I am glad to read the newspaper cutting from
the Pioneer Press of April 19th, which you so kindly sent me.

In these days of hurry and bustle, when events of importance crowd so fast on each other that the memory of each is necessarily short lived, it is gratifying to be reminded from time to time of important services rendered to the nation in a past which, though really recent, seems to the younger generation far away.

The service which you performed for the United States, and indeed for the world, in describing the Yellowstone Park, and in setting on foot and persistently advocating the plan to make it a national pleasure ground, will always be remembered; and it is well that public acknowledgment should be made of it occasionally, so that the men of this generation may not forget what they owe to those of the past.

  Yours very truly,

  Geo. Bird Grinnell.

The Act of Congress creating the Park provided that this region should be “set apart for a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” but this end has not been accomplished except as the result of untiring vigilance and labor on the part of a very few persons who have never wavered in their loyalty to the Park.  It may never be known how nearly the purposes of the Act of Dedication have escaped defeat; but a letter written to me by George Bird Grinnell and an editorial from Forest and Stream may reveal to visitors who now enjoy without let or hindrance the wonders of that region, how narrowly this “Temple of the living God,” as it has been termed, has escaped desecration at the hands of avaricious money-getters, and becoming a “Den of Thieves.”

                                          New York, July 25, 1905.
  Mr. N.P.  Langford.

Dear Sir:  I am very glad that your diary is to be published. 
It is something that I have long hoped that we
might see.

It is true, as you say, that I have for a good many years done what I could toward protecting the game in the Yellowstone Park; but what seems to me more important than that is that Forest and Stream for a dozen years carried on, almost single handed, a fight for the integrity of the National Park.  If you remember, all through from 1881 or thereabouts to 1890 continued efforts were being made to gain control of the park by one syndicate and another, or to run a railroad through it, or to put an elevator down the side of the canon—­in short, to use this public pleasure ground as a means for private gain.  There were half a dozen of us who, being very enthusiastic about the park, and, being in a position to watch legislation at Washington, and also to know what was going on in the Interior Department, kept ourselves very much alive to the situation and succeeded in choking off half a dozen