t of myself. They were Peter's
windmill, raised to the Nth power. They loomed above me, seeming to
say: "We are timeless. You, puny one, can live but a day." They stood
there as they had stood from the moment God first whispered: "Let
there be light"--and there was light. But no, I'm wrong there, as
Peter would very promptly have told me, for it was only in the
Cambrian Period that the cornerstone of the Rockies was laid. The
geologic clock ticked out its centuries until the swamps of the Coal
Period were full of Peter's Oldest Inhabitants in the form of
Dinosaurs and then came the Cretaceous Period and the Great Architect
looked down and bade the Rockies arise, and tooled them into beauty
with His blue-green glaciers and His singing rivers, and touched the
lordliest peaks with wine-glow and filled the azure valleys with music
and peace. And we threaded along those valley-sides on our little
ribbons of steel, skirted the shouting rivers and plunged into tiny
twisted tubes of darkness, emerging again into the light and once more
hearing the timeless giants, with their snow-white heads against the
sunset, repeat their whisper: "We live and are eternal. Ye, who fret
about our feet, dream for a day, and are forgotten!"

But we seemed to be stepping out into a new world, by the time we got
to Pasadena. It was a summery and flowery and holiday world, and it
impressed me as being solely and scrupulously organized for pleasure.
Yet all minor surprises were submerged in the biggest surprise of
Peter's bungalow, which is really more like a _chateau_, and strikes
me as being singularly like Peter himself, not amazingly impressive to
look at, perhaps, but hiding from the world a startingly rich and
luxurious interior. The house itself, half hidden in shrubbery, is of
weather-stained stucco, and looks at first sight a little gloomy, with
the _patina_ of time upon it. But it is a restful change from the
spick-and-spanness of the near-by millionaire colony, so eloquent of
the paint-brush and the lawn-valet's shears, so smug and new and
strident in its paraded opulence. Peter's gardens, in fact, are a
rather careless riot of color and line, a sort of achieved genteel
roughness, like certain phases of his house, as though the wave of
refinement driven too high had broken and tumbled over on itself.

The house, which is the shape of an "E" without the middle stroke, has
a green-sodded _patio_ between the two wings, with a small fountain