ut marvelous imitation roses from
carrots for his little friend. I am inclined to think that the few
roses strewn in John's path were such scentless imitations. The thorns
only were real. From the persecutions of the young and old of a
certain class his life was a torment. I don't know what was the exact
philosophy that Confucius taught, but it is to be hoped that poor John
in his persecution is still able to detect the conscious hate and fear
with which inferiority always regards the possibility of even-handed
justice, and which is the keynote to the vulgar clamor about servile
and degraded races.

III

M'LISS GOES TO SCHOOL[65]

Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler undulations,
and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side of a great red
mountain, stands "Smith's Pocket." Seen from the red road at sunset,
in the red light and the red dust, its white houses look like the
outcroppings of quartz on the mountain-side. The red stage topped with
red-shirted passengers is lost to view half a dozen times in the
tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way places,
and vanishing altogether within a hundred yards of the town. It is
probably owing to this sudden twist in the road that the advent of a
stranger at Smith's Pocket is usually attended with a peculiar
circumstance. Dismounting from the vehicle at the stage office, the
too confident traveler is apt to walk straight out of town under the
impression that it lies in quite another direction. It is related that
one of the tunnelmen, two miles from town, met one of these
self-reliant passengers with a carpet-bag, umbrella, _Harper's
Magazine_, and other evidences of "civilization and refinement,"
plodding along over the road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring to
find the settlement of Smith's Pocket.

[Footnote 65: From M'Liss, one of the stories in "The Luck of Roaring
Camp" volume. Copyright, 1871, 1899. Houghton, Mifflin Company.]

An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were huge
fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil,
resembling more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than the
work of man; while, half-way down, a long flume straddled its narrow
body and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil
of some forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed
the road, hi