But to return to the Civil Service Commission. He gave faithful effort and all his intelligence to the improvement of that important service, and often had the sensation, which he was doomed to have in so many of his positions, that he was more or less beating his head against the wall. He sent me at that time a copy of a letter to the Civil Service Commissioners from an applicant who had been summoned to an examination and had not appeared. To show the ignorance of some of the applicants, I cannot resist quoting from the letter. Alabama Mobile October 6, 1890. _To the Comishers of Sivel Serves_, My dear brothers: I am very sorry that I could not Meet you on the day you said but gentlemen, i am glad of the cause that kept me away. Let me tell you Mr. Comisher, i hav bin mard five years antel the Other Da me and my wife hav bin the onley mbrs en ow Famly. Well Sir on the Da before youre examnenashun My Wife Had a Kupple ov tuins, gest think of it, Mr. Comischer--and of course i couddnt go off and Leave her and them. i just staid home and we had a sellabration--and i invited all my friends to dinner. i wish you had been thare. i Hope i can be thare next time Mr. Comischer. Very truly yours. I remember my brother saying humorously that, after all, that particular gentleman might just as well have stayed away with his “tuins” and “sellabration,” as he really doubted whether he could have passed the “examnenashun” had he appeared! VI THE ELKHORN RANCH AND NEAR-ROUGHING IT IN YELLOWSTONE PARK From the cloistered life of American college boys, sheltered from the ruder currents of the world by the ramparts of wealth and gentle nurture, he passed, still very young, to the wild and free existence of the plains and the hills. In the silence of those vast solitudes men grow to full stature, when the original stuff is good. He came back to the East, bringing with him, as Tennyson sang, “The wrestling thews that throw the world.”      --From a speech by John Hay. O lover of the things God made-- Hill, valley, mountain, plain: The lightning from the darkened cloud, The storm-burst with its rain. --Roosevelt, “Hymn of Molokai.”