We entered the Yellowstone Park at Minado and drove through the geyser country.  We stopped at Dwelly’s, a little log-cabin famous to all travellers, just before entering the park.  On leaving there, we had been told that there were occasional hold-ups of parties travelling in private vehicles, as we were.  The following day, while passing along a lonely road, a man suddenly leaped from the bushes and seized the bridles of the horses.  The Doctor appeared to be terribly frightened, and we were all very much excited when we saw that the driver had missed his aim when he fired at the bandit.  The robber was of the appearance approved in dime novels; he wore a sacking over his head with eye-holes cut in it through which he could see, and looked in all other respects a disreputable cut-throat.  Just as we were about to surrender our jewels and money, Dr. Talmage confessed that he had arranged the hold-up for our benefit, and that it was a practical joke of his.  He was always full of mischief, and took delight in surprising people.

On Sunday Dr. Talmage preached in the parlours of the Fountain Hotel.  The rooms were crowded with the soldiers who were stationed in the park.  The Doctor’s sermon was on garrison duty; he said afterwards that he found it extremely difficult to talk there because the rooms were small, and the people were too close to him.  We paid a visit to Mr. Henderson, who was an official of the Yellowstone Park at that time, and whose brother was Speaker of the House in Washington.  He begged Dr. Talmage to use his influence with members of Congress to oppose a project which had been started, to build a trolley line through the Yellowstone Park.  The Doctor promised to do so, and I think the trolley line has not been built.  We left the Yellowstone Park, at Cinabar, and went direct to Seattle.  During our stay in Seattle the whole town was excited one morning by the arrival of a ship from the Klondike, that region of golden romance and painful reality.  The Doctor and I went down to the wharf to see the great ship disembark these gold-diggers; but for several hours the four hundred passengers had been detained on board because $24,000 in gold dust, carried by two miners, had been stolen; and though a search had been instituted, to which everyone had been compelled to submit, no clue to the thief had been found.  Dr. Talmage was profoundly impressed by the misfortune of these two men, who after months of exposure and fatigue were now obliged to walk ashore penniless.  A number of these four hundred passengers had brought back an aggregate of about $4,000,000 from the Klondike; but many among them had brought back only disappointment, and their haggard faces were pitiful to see; indeed, the Doctor told me that out of the thousands who went fortune hunting to Alaska, only about 3 per cent. came back richer than when they started.