ve, "These
nuts sure can give a play." We echoed his sentiments.

I should make one exception to my statement that people won't go indoors
to be amused. They go to the "movies"--I think they would risk their
lives to see a new film almost as recklessly as the actors who make
them. The most interesting part of the moving-picture business is
out-of-doors, however. You are walking down the street and notice an
excitement ahead. Douglas Fairbanks is doing a little tightrope walking
on the telegraph wires. A little farther on a large crowd indicates
further thrills. Presently there is a splash and Charley Chaplin has
disappeared into a fountain with two policemen in pursuit. Once while we
were motoring we came to a disused railway spur, and were surprised to
find a large and fussy engine getting up steam while a crowd blocked
the road for some distance. A lady in pink satin was chained to the
rails--placed there by the villain, who was smoking cigarettes in the
offing, waiting for his next cue. The lady in pink satin had made a
little dugout for herself under the track, and as the locomotive
thundered up she was to slip underneath--a job that the mines of
Golconda would not have tempted me to try. Moving-picture actors have a
very high order of courage. We could not stay for the denouement, as we
had a nervous old lady with us, who firmly declined to witness any such
hair-raising spectacle. I looked in the paper next morning for railway
accidents to pink ladies, but could find nothing, so she probably pulled
it off successfully.

Every year new theatres are built. We have seen Ruth St. Denis at the
Organ Pavilion of the San Diego Exposition, and Julius Caesar with an
all-star cast in the hills back of Hollywood, where the space was
unlimited, and Caesar's triumph included elephants and other beasts,
loaned by the "movies," and Brutus' camp spread over the hillside as
it might actually have done long ago. There is a place in the back
country near Escondido, where at the time of the harvest moon an
Indian play with music is given every year. At Easter thousands
of people go up Mount Rubidoux, near Riverside, for the sunrise
service. Some celebrated singer usually takes part and it is very
lovely--quite unlike anything else.

So we have come to belong to what the French would call the school
of "pleine air." I once knew an adorable little boy who expressed
it better than I can:

"Sun callin' me, sky callin' me,
C