Ikey has had nothing to do with my tour at any time. That is one thing to be thankful for. Discharged from the Army a few days ago, he had been given some kind of job at the Lake Hotel for the summer. He is on his way there now, he says, and is holding over here for the crust to freeze before pushing on. Time was hanging rather heavily on his hands this afternoon, which is probably the reason that he cooked up a case of laundry soap in a five-gallon oil can and poured the resultant mess down the crater of "The Minute Man." The latter won its name as a consequence of playing with remarkable regularity practically upon the sixtieth tick of the minute from its last spout. Or, at least, that was what was claimed for it. Ikey maintains that he clocked it for half an hour, and that it never did better than once in eighty seconds, and that it was increasing its interval as the sun declined. He held that a geyser that refused to recognize its duty to live up to its name and reputation should be disciplined--just like in the Army. Perhaps it was discouraged from getting so far behind schedule. If that was the case, plainly the proper thing to do was to help it to make up lost time in one whale of an eruption, and then it might start with a clean slate and live up to its name. He was only acting for the geyser's own good. Thus Ikey, but only after he had put his theory into practice. Ikey waited until he had the station to himself before cooking up his dope. Holt had pushed on to Mammoth Hot Springs and Carr and I had gone out to watch for the eruption of the Monarch. With no scout and non-com present, he doubtless figured he would run small chance of having his experiment interfered with. Carr and I, sitting on the formation over by the crater of the Monarch, saw him come down with an oil can on his shoulder and start fussing round in the vicinity of "The Minute Man." Suddenly a series of heavy reverberations shook the formation beneath our feet, and at the same instant Ikey turned tail and started to run. He was just in time to avoid the deluge from a great gush of water and steam that shot a hundred feet in the air, but not to escape the mountainous discharge of soapsuds that followed in its wake. Within a few seconds that original five gallons of soft soap had been beaten to a million times its original volume, and for a hundred yards to windward it covered the formation in great white, fluffy, iridescent heaps. Pear's Soap's original "Bubbles" boy wasn't a patch on the sputtering little Hebrew who finally pawed his way to fresh air and sunshine from the outermost of the sparkling saponaceous hillocks. Carr, whose mother had been a washer-woman, almost wept at the visions of his innocent childhood conjured up by the sight of such seas of suds.