Yet even so commendable an accomplishment as this only aroused a storm of criticism. The removal of the fire-inviting underbrush shocked the nerves of sentimentalists who advocated the preservation of the Mariposa Grove “in the condition in which it won the admiration of its discoverer and appealed to the enthusiasm of the world.” They lamented over the fancied catastrophe. They fell into near convulsions over the thought that the virginal beauty of the Grove was no more, because its “flowering shrubs” had been grubbed out. Even the _Century Magazine_ took up the bodeful cry. Joaquin Miller’s statement that he had travelled from Babylon to Jerusalem “without seeing so much as a grasshopper, or a bird, or a blade of grass in a land that was once an Eden” was quoted as a prophecy of the Grove’s condition in the near future if these “destructive tendencies” continued. Alexander, they pointed out, mourned because Greek ivy would not grow on the tower of Babel and inferred that such would be California’s lot when her eyesight sufficiently improved to see the need of enhancing the grandeur of her Sequoias by garlands. And all the while they failed to see the irony of their plea. They did not know that sentiment, like ivy, can cling to a very flat surface. Nor is this all that the Commissioners accomplished. To their list of achievements must be added yet another. In order to make the Grant of 1864 a treasure that “all shall share and none shall be the poorer for sharing,” they warred against unscrupulous commercial enterprises. Hawkers continually pressed forward their schemes in honeyed words to make travelers the victims of innumerable petty charges and vexations. However, the Commissioners who were all men of high principles would have none of them. Concessioners who proved unprincipled in their treatment of tourists were summarily deprived of the means with which to accrue further ill-gotten gains. In all truthfulness it can be stated that throughout the entire forty years of State control[1] the various Commissioners never sullied their hands in graft. Though they received not a penny in salary and often laid out considerable sums to swell the meager appropriations of the State Legislature, their office was never used for the purpose of gain. In short, they carried a trusteeship that concerned the high honor of the Commonwealth of California in a manner which justifies the pride of the people.