aps to be saltsown by the very same
bombercommand which had dropped the spectacular but futile incendiaries.
The triumph of the salt people was ungenerous in its enthusiasm; the
disgruntled antisalts, now a mere handful of diehards publishing an
esoteric press, muttered everyone would be sorry, wait and see.

_30._ The grass itself waited for nothing. It seemed to take new
strength from the indignities inflicted upon it and it increased, if
anything, its tempo of growth. It plunged into the ocean in a dozen
spots at once. It swarmed over sand which had never known anything but
cactus and the Sierra Madres became great humps of green against the
skyline. This last conquest shocked those who had thought the mountains
immune in their inhospitable heights. _Cynodon dactylon_, uninoculated,
had always shunned coldness, though it survived some degrees of frost.
The giant growth, however, seemed to be less subject to this inhibition,
though it too showed slower progress in the higher and colder regions.
The _Intelligencer_ planned to move from Pomona to San Bernardino and if
necessary to Victorville.

Daily Le ffacase became a sterner taskmaster, a more pettishly exacting
employer. By the living guts of William Lloyd Garrison, he raged, had no
one ever driven the simple elements of punctuation into my bloody head?
Had no schoolmaster in moments of heroic enthusiasm attempted to pound a
few rules of rhetoric through my incrassate skull? Had I never heard of
taste? Was the word "style" outside my macilent vocabulary? What the
devil did I mean by standing there with my mouth open, exposing my
unfortunate teeth for all the world to see? Was it possible for any
allegedly human to be as addlepated as I? And had I been thrust from my
mother's womb--I suppress his horrible adjectives--only to torment and
afflict his longsuffering editorial patience?

A hundred times I was tempted to sever my connection with this
journalistic autocrat. My column was widely read and two
publishinghouses had approached me with the idea of putting out a book,
any editorial revision and emendations to be taken care of by them
without disturbing me at all. I could have allied myself with almost any
paper in the country, undoubtedly at better than the meager stipend Le
ffacase doled out to me.

But I think loyalty is one of the most admirable of virtues and it was
not in my nature to desert the _Intelligencer_--certainly not till I
could secure a lengt