r pilgrimage. But here
is an apologue: The peach, from blossom to maturity, is the most
attractive of fruits. Yet the demands of the market, competition, and
fashion often cause it to be plucked and shipped while green. It never
matures, though it may take a deceptive richness of color; it decays
without ripening. And the last end of that peach is worse than the first.

THE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVE

On one of the most charming of the many wonderfully picturesque little
beaches on the Pacific coast, near Monterey, is the idlest if not the
most disagreeable social group in the world. Just off the shore, farther
than a stone's-throw, lies a mass of broken rocks. The surf comes leaping
and laughing in, sending up, above the curving green breakers and crests
of foam, jets and spirals of water which flash like silver fountains in
the sunlight. These islets of rocks are the homes of the sea-lion. This
loafer of the coast congregates here by the thousand. Sometimes the rocks
are quite covered, the smooth rounded surface of the larger one
presenting the appearance at a distance of a knoll dotted with dirty
sheep. There is generally a select knot of a dozen floating about in the
still water under the lee of the rock, bobbing up their tails and
flippers very much as black driftwood might heave about in the tide.
During certain parts of the day members of this community are off fishing
in deep water; but what they like best to do is to crawl up on the rocks
and grunt and bellow, or go to sleep in the sun. Some of them lie half in
water, their tails floating and their ungainly heads wagging. These
uneasy ones are always wriggling out or plunging in. Some crawl to the
tops of the rocks and lie like gunny bags stuffed with meal, or they
repose on the broken surfaces like masses of jelly. When they are all at
home the rocks have not room for them, and they crawl on and over each
other, and lie like piles of undressed pork. In the water they are black,
but when they are dry in the sun the skin becomes a dirty light brown.
Many of them are huge fellows, with a body as big as an ox. In the water
they are repulsively graceful; on the rocks they are as ungainly as
boneless cows, or hogs that have lost their shape in prosperity. Summer
and winter (and it is almost always summer on this coast) these beasts,
which are well fitted neither for land nor water, spend their time in
absolute indolence, except when they are compelled to crui