nd wild-looking hieroglyphs traced with his
forefinger dipped in ink, which doubtless in his own language conveys
a scathing commentary on my composition. But he sleeps peacefully,
and there is something in his face which tells me that he has already
wandered away to that dim region of his youth where I cannot follow him.
And as there comes a strange stirring at my heart when I contemplate the
immeasurable gulf which lies between us, and how slight and feeble as
yet is his grasp on this world and its strange realities, I find, too
late, that I also am a willing victim of the Venerable Impostor.

FROM A BALCONY

The little stone balcony, which, by a popular fallacy, is supposed to be
a necessary appurtenance of my window, has long been to me a source of
curious interest. The fact that the asperities of our summer weather
will not permit me to use it but once or twice in six months does not
alter my concern for this incongruous ornament. It affects me as I
suppose the conscious possession of a linen coat or a nankeen trousers
might affect a sojourner here who has not entirely outgrown his memory
of Eastern summer heat and its glorious compensations,--a luxurious
providence against a possible but by no means probable contingency. I do
no longer wonder at the persistency with which San Franciscans adhere
to this architectural superfluity in the face of climatical
impossibilities. The balconies in which no one sits, the piazzas
on which no one lounges, are timid advances made to a climate whose
churlishness we are trying to temper by an ostentation of confidence.
Ridiculous as this spectacle is at all seasons, it is never more so than
in that bleak interval between sunset and dark, when the shrill
scream of the factory whistle seems to have concentrated all the hard,
unsympathetic quality of the climate into one vocal expression. Add to
this the appearance of one or two pedestrians, manifestly too late for
their dinners, and tasting in the shrewish air a bitter premonition of
the welcome that awaits them at home, and you have one of those ordinary
views from my balcony which makes the balcony itself ridiculous.

But as I lean over its balustrade to-night--a night rare in its kindness
and beauty--and watch the fiery ashes of my cigar drop into the abysmal
darkness below, I am inclined to take back the whole of that preceding
paragraph, although it cost me some labor to elaborate its polite
malevolence. I can even re