aper. It was the most
chastening experience of my life. No doubt it did me good. My ego has
actually felt lighter." He smiled. But he added in a moment: "It left a
scar, nevertheless."

"Never mind," said Isabel, consolingly. "All that will read delightfully
in your biography. What on this difficult globe is not difficult, first,
last, and always? The only thing for you to do is to snap your fingers
at everything, as we do out here, and see nothing in the future but
success. How do you like the land of your birth?"

"I hate it!" he said intensely. "Washington is a crude unwieldy village.
New York is like one of those nightmares a certain class of writers
project and label 'Earth in the Year 2000.' Chicago is the entrails of
the universe. The small interior towns and villages of the Eastern
States are open mausoleums for people so old and so dried up that their
end will be not death but desiccation. There is nothing picturesque in
those old towns, for they were dead before they were civilized. Some of
the cities and villages of the South are certainly attractive to look at
and have a background of a sort, but they are as lifeless as their
negroes. The cities of the West are hives, and when you have seen one
you have seen all. Its smaller communities are horrors, pure and simple.
Much of the country is magnificent. The Adirondacks, the Hudson River,
Yellowstone, those great prairies and deserts, atone for a good deal.
The last three weeks I have spent in southern California. It seemed to
me--below Santa Barbara, at least--little more than a reclaimed
desert--and with nothing of the wonderful atmospheric effects of the
great interior deserts; nothing but dirt and a hideous low shrub caked
with prehistoric dust. Precious little of it reclaimed at that. I am
glad that ranch is in good hands. I never want to see the place again.
That eternally grinning sky! That dead atmosphere! It blunted my nerves
for the time, but the reaction is all the worse. However--" He stood up
and leaned over the railing. "I did not expect the earthly paradise. I
am not going to treat you to a continued diatribe--"

"But you must like California--love it!" cried Isabel, in alarm. "Of
course you have hated everything--natural enough--but not California! It
is your State, your home, your future. You must begin by liking it, at
least."

"Very well, mentor, I shall do my best. One might certainly indulge in
an illusion or two up here. I thought as I