to a country where a man must look
out for himself. The very hotels bristled with notices about keeping my
door locked and depositing my valuables in a safe. The white man in a
lump is bad. Weeping softly for O-Toyo (little I knew then that my
heart was to be torn afresh from my bosom) I fell asleep in the clanging
hotel.

Next morning I had entered upon the deferred inheritance. There are
no princes in America--at least with crowns on their heads--but a
generous-minded member of some royal family received my letter of
introduction. Ere the day closed I was a member of the two clubs, and
booked for many engagements to dinner and party. Now, this prince, upon
whose financial operations be continual increase, had no reason, nor had
the others, his friends, to put himself out for the sake of one Briton
more or less, but he rested not till he had accomplished all in my
behalf that a mother could think of for her debutante daughter.

Do you know the Bohemian Club of San Francisco? They say its fame
extends over the world. It was created, somewhat on the lines of the
Savage, by men who wrote or drew things, and has blossomed into most
unrepublican luxury. The ruler of the place is an owl--an owl standing
upon a skull and cross-bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the man
of letters and the end of his hopes for immortality. The owl stands
on the staircase, a statue four feet high; is carved in the wood-work,
flutters on the frescoed ceiling, is stamped on the note-paper, and
hangs on the walls. He is an ancient and honorable bird. Under his wing
'twas my privilege to meet with white men whose lives were not chained
down to routine of toil, who wrote magazine articles instead of reading
them hurriedly in the pauses of office-work, who painted pictures
instead of contenting themselves with cheap etchings picked up at
another man's sale of effects. Mine were all the rights of social
intercourse, craft by craft, that India, stony-hearted step-mother of
collectors, has swindled us out of. Treading soft carpets and breathing
the incense of superior cigars, I wandered from room to room studying
the paintings in which the members of the club had caricatured
themselves, their associates, and their aims. There was a slick French
audacity about the workmanship of these men of toil unbending that went
straight to the heart of the beholder. And yet it was not altogether
French. A dry grimness of treatment, almost Dutch, marked the
d