e grass dies."

"Or until it meets some insuperable object," supplemented Miss Francis.

My faith in insuperable objects had been somewhat shaken. "How long do
you think it will be before the grass dies?" I asked her.

She regarded me gravely, as though I had been a child asking an absurd
question. "Possibly a thousand years."

My enthusiasm was dampened. But after leaving her I remembered how
certain types of people always look for the dark side of things. It
costs no more to be an optimist than a pessimist; it is sunshine grows
flowers, not clouds; and if Miss Francis chose to think the grass might
live a thousand years, I was equally free to think it might die next
week. Thus heartened by this bit of homely philosophy, just as valid as
any of the stuff entombed in wordy books, I wrote up my interview,
careful to guide myself by all the stifling strictures and adjurations
impressed upon me by the tyrannically narrowminded editor. If I may
anticipate the order of events, it appeared next day in almost
recognizable form under the heading, ABNORMAL GRASS TO DIE SOON, SAYS
ORIGINATOR.

_29._ The small city of Pomona was swollen to boomtown size by the
excursion there of so many enterprises forced from Los Angeles. Ordinary
citizens without heavy responsibilities when uprooted thought only of
putting as much distance as possible between themselves and their
persecutor; but the officials, the industrialists, the businessmen, the
staffs of great newspapers hovered close by, like small boys near the
knothole in the ballpark fence from which theyd been banished by an
officious cop.

The _Intelligencer_ was lodged over the printshop of a local tributary
which had agreed to the ousting with the most hypocritical assurances of
joy at the honor done them and payment--in the smallest possible
type--by the addition to the great newspaper's masthead of the words,
"And Pomona _Post-Telegram_."

Packed into this inadequate space were the entire staff and files of the
metropolitan daily. No wonder the confusion obviated all possibility of
normal routine. In addition, the disruption of railroad schedules made
the delivery of mail a hazard rather than a certainty. Perhaps this was
why, weeks after they were due, it was only upon my return from
interviewing Miss Francis I received my checks from the _Weekly
Ruminant_ and the _Honeycomb_.

It may have been the boomtown atmosphere I have already mentioned or
because at the same t