hen I stood knee-deep in the heather of
Glengyle, and looked wistfully over the grey sea. 'Twas but a month
later when, homeless and friendless, I stood on the beach by the Cliff
House of San Francisco, and gazed over the fretful waters of another
ocean. Such is the romance of destiny.

Consigned, so to speak, to my cousin the sheep-raiser of the
Saskatchewan, I found myself setting foot on the strange land with but
little heart for my new vocation. My mind, cramful of book notions,
craved for the larger life. I was valiantly mad for adventure; to fare
forth haphazardly; to come upon naked danger; to feel the bludgeonings
of mischance; to tramp, to starve, to sleep under the stars. It was the
callow boy-idea perpetuated in the man, and it was to lead me a sorry
dance. But I could not overbear it. Strong in me was the spirit of the
gypsy. The joy of youth and health was brawling in my veins. A few
thistledown years, said I, would not matter. And there was Stevenson and
his glamorous islands winning me on.

So it came about I stood solitary on the beach by the seal rocks, with a
thousand memories confusing in my head. There was the long train ride
with its strange pictures: the crude farms, the glooming forests, the
gleaming lakes that would drown my whole country, the aching plains,
the mountains that rip-sawed the sky, the fear-made-eternal of the
desert. Lastly, a sudden, sunlit paradise, California.

I had lived through a week of wizardry such as I had never dreamed of,
and here was I at the very throne of Western empire. And what a place it
was, and what a people--with the imperious mood of the West softened by
the spell of the Orient and mellowed by the glamour of Old Spain. San
Francisco! A score of tongues clamoured in her streets and in her
byways a score of races lurked austerely. She suckled at her breast the
children of the old grey nations and gave them of her spirit, that swift
purposeful spirit so proud of past achievement and so convinced of
glorious destiny.

I marvelled at the rush of affairs and the zest of amusement. Every one
seemed to be making money easily and spending it eagerly. Every one was
happy, sanguine, strenuous. At night Market Street was a dazzling alley
of light, where stalwart men and handsome women jostled in and out of
the glittering restaurants. Yet amid this eager, passionate life I felt
a dreary sense of outsideness. At times my heart fairly ached with
loneliness, and I wandere