for me to exchange thoughts with an enlightened mind. From the bricks of
an old fallen chimney I had built an Alhambra of my own; towers,
terraces, and all were complete, and chalk inscriptions marked the
different sections. Here I led the city man and questioned him about
"The Alhambra," but he was as ignorant as the man on the ranch, and then
I consoled myself with the thought that there were only two clever people
in the world--Washington Irving and myself.

My other reading-matter at that time consisted mainly of dime novels,
borrowed from the hired men, and newspapers in which the servants gloated
over the adventures of poor but virtuous shop-girls.

Through reading such stuff my mind was necessarily ridiculously
conventional, but being very lonely I read everything that came my way,
and was greatly impressed by Ouida's story "Signa," which I devoured
regularly for a couple of years. I never knew the finish until I grew
up, for the closing chapters were missing from my copy, so I kept on
dreaming with the hero, and, like him, unable to see Nemesis, at the end.
My work on the ranch at one time was to watch the bees, and as I sat
under a tree from sunrise till late in the afternoon, waiting for the
swarming, I had plenty of time to read and dream. Livermore Valley was
very flat, and even the hills around were then to me devoid of interest,
and the only incident to break in on my visions was when I gave the alarm
of swarming, and the ranch folks rushed out with pots, pans, and buckets
of water. I think the opening line of "Signa" was "It was only a little
lad," yet he had dreams of becoming a great musician, and having all
Europe at his feet. Well, I was only a little lad, too, but why could
not I become what "Signa" dreamed of being?

Life on a Californian ranch was then to me the dullest possible
existence, and every day I thought of going out beyond the sky-line to
see the world. Even then there were whispers, promptings; my mind
inclined to things beautiful, although my environment was unbeautiful.
The hills and valleys around were eyesores and aching pits, and I never
loved them till I left them.

* * * * *

Before I was eleven I left the ranch and came to Oakland, where I spent
so much of my time in the Free Public Library, eagerly reading everything
that came to hand, that I developed the first stages of St. Vitus' dance
from lack of exercise. Disillusions quickly followed, as I learned more
of th