mean and miserable
thirteen dollars! When I think of it I almost fall to tears. So might
some coward son of the seas sell a battleship for ten pounds because it
was not suitable for a ferry-boat or a river yacht. I would rather a
thousand times have paid the thirteen dollars myself and have taken him
out to fight his last Armageddon and then have shot him on the lonely
hills from which all other bulls had fled. These mean-souled,
conscienceless moneymakers, who could not understand so brave, so fine a
spirit, sold him to a Santa Rosa butcher! Shame on them, I say. I am
sorry I ever revisited the Valley of the Seven Moons to hear such
lamentable news. It made me unhappy then, makes me unhappy now. My only
consolation is that once, and twice, and thrice, and yet again, I gave
El Toro the chance of finding happiness in the conflict. And when I left
Los Guilucos, before I returned to England, I sat upon his huge
shoulders and scratched him most thoroughly, while ever and again I
offered him a juicy and unbruised pear. On that occasion I pulled him
the best fruit, and left windfalls for the ranging, greedy hogs. And as
I fed and scratched him he lay on his hunkers in great content, and made
pleasant noises as he remembered the day before. On that day, owing to
the kindly feeling of me, his true and real friend, he had had a great
time three miles towards Glenallen, and had beaten a newly-imported bull
out of all sense of self-importance. He was pleased with himself,
pleased with me, pleased with the world.

BOOKS IN THE GREAT WEST

Since taking to writing as a profession I have lost most of the interest
I had in literature as literature pure and simple. That interest
gradually faded and "Art for Art's sake," in the sense the simple in
studios are wont to dilate upon, touches me no more, or very, very
rarely. The books I love now are those which teach me something actual
about the living world; and it troubles me not at all if any of them
betray no sense of beauty and lack immortal words. Their artistry is
nothing, what they say is everything. So on the shelf to which I mostly
resort is a book on the Himalayas; a Lloyd's Shipping Register; a little
work on seamanship that every would-be second mate knows; Brown's
Nautical Almanacs; a Channel Pilot; a Continental Bradshaw; many
Baedekers; a Directory to the Indian Ocean and the China Seas; a big
folding map of the United States; some books dealing with strategy, and