he mountain wall had ushered them suddenly
into another world--a world, strange, indeed, to eyes accustomed to snow
and ice and naked trees and leaden clouds.

Among the many little cities half concealed in the luxurious,
semi-tropical verdure of the wide valley at the foot of the mountains,
Fairlands--if you ask a citizen of that well-known mecca of the
tourist--is easily the Queen. As for that! all our Southern California
cities are set in wildernesses of beauty; all are in wide valleys; all are
at the foot of the mountains; all are meccas for tourists; each one--if
you ask a citizen--is the Queen. If you, perchance should question this
fact--write for our advertising literature.

Passengers on the Golden State Limited--as perhaps you know--do not go
direct to Fairlands. They change at Fairlands Junction. The little city,
itself, is set in the lap of the hills that form the southern side of the
valley, some three miles from the main line. It is as though this
particular "Queen" withdrew from the great highway traveled by the vulgar
herd--in the proud aloofness of her superior clay, sufficient unto
herself. The soil out of which Fairlands is made is much richer, it is
said, than the common dirt of her sister cities less than fifteen miles
distant. A difference of only a few feet in elevation seems, strangely, to
give her a much more rarefied air. Her proudest boast is that she has a
larger number of millionaires in proportion to her population than any
other city in the land.

It was these peculiar and well-known advantages of Fairlands that led the
young man of my story to select it as the starting point of his worthy
ambition. And Fairlands is a good place for one so richly endowed with an
inheritance that cannot be expressed in dollars to try his strength. Given
such a community, amid such surroundings, with a man like the young man of
my story, and something may be depended upon to happen.

While the travelers from the East, bound for Fairlands, were waiting at
the Junction for the local train that would take them through the orange
groves to their journey's end, the young man noticed the woman of the
observation car platform with her two companions. And now, as he paced to
and fro, enjoying the exercise after the days of confinement in the
Pullman, he observed them with stimulated interest--they, too, were going
to Fairlands.

The man of the party, though certainly not old in years, was frightfully
aged by di