the day after my arrival I made one very serious mistake; in fact, it
came near to being a fatal one. I met a lady, and naturally right away
she asked me the customary opening question. Every conversation between
a stranger and a resident begins according to that formula. Still it
seemed to me an inopportune hour for bringing up the subject. It was
early in March and the day was one of those days which a greenhorn from
the East might have been pardoned for regarding as verging upon the
chilly--not to say the raw. Also, it seemed to be raining. I say it
seemed to be raining, because no true Southern Californian would admit
any actual defects in the climatic arrangements. If pressed he might
concede that ostensibly an infinitesimal percentage of precipitation was
descending, and that apparently the mercury had descended a notch or two
in the tube. Further than that, in the absence of the official reports,
he would not care to commit himself.

You never saw such touching loyalty anywhere! Those scoffing neighbors
of Noah who kept denying on there was going to be any flood right up to
the moment when they went down for the third time were rank amateurs
alongside a seasoned resident of Los Angeles. I was newly arrived,
however, and I hadn't acquired the ethics yet; and, besides, I had
contracted a bad cold and had been taking a number of things for it and
for the moment was, as you might say, full of conflicting emulsions. So,
in reply to this lady's question, I said it occurred to me that the
prevalent atmospheric conditions might for the nonce stand a few
trifling alterations without any permanent ill effects.

I repeat that this was a mistake; for this particular lady was herself a
recent arrival, and of all the incurable Californians, the new ones are
the most incurable. She gave me one look--but such a look! From a
reasonably solid person I became first a pulp and then a pap; and then,
reversing the processes of creation as laid down in Genesis, first
chapter, and first to fifth verses, I liquefied and turned to gas, and
darkness covered me, and I became void and without form, and passed off
in the form of a vapor, leaving my clothes inhabited only by a blushing
and embarrassed emptiness. When the outraged lady abated the intensity
of her scornful gaze and I painfully reassembled my astral body out of
space and projected it back into my earthly tenement again, I found I'd
shrunk so in these various processes that nothin