grows
maddening; and always they are intently following the routine you saw
them following last week or the week before, or the week before that.
They have traveled clear across the continent to practice such
diversions as they might have had within two hours' ride of Philadelphia
or New York; and they are going to practice them, too, or know the
reason why.

Of course they are not all constituted this way; I am speaking now of
the impression created in California by tourists in bulk. They decline
to do the things for which this country is best adapted; they will not
see the things for which it is most famous. Few of them take the
roughing trips up into the mountains; fewer still visit the desert
country. All about them the tremendous engineering contracts that have
made this land a commercial Arabian Nights' Entertainment are being
carried out--the mighty reclamation schemes; the irrigation projects;
the damming up of canyons and the shoveling away of mountains--but your
average group of Eastern tourists pass these by with dull and glazed
eyes, their souls being bound up in the desire to reach the next hotel
on the route with the least possible waste of time, and take up the
routine where it was broken off at the last hotel.

They tennis and they golf, and some go horseback riding and some take
drives; and at one or two places there is polo in the season. Likewise,
in accordance with the rules laid down by the Palm Beach authorities,
the women change clothes as often as possible during the course of the
day; and in the evening all hands appear in full dress for dinner, the
same being very wearing on men and very pleasing to women--that is, all
of them do except a few obstinate persons who defy convention and remain
comfortable. After dinner some of the younger people dance and some of
the older ones play bridge; but the vast majority sit round--and then
sit round some more and wonder whether eleven o'clock will ever come so
they can go to bed!

A good many take the wrong kind of clothes out there with them. They
have read in the advertisements that Southern California is a land of
perpetual balm, where flowers bloom the year round; and they pack their
trunks with the lightest and thinnest wearing apparel they own, which is
a mistake. The natives know better than that. The all-wool sweater is
the national garment of the Western Coast--both sexes and all ages go to
it unanimously. Experience proves it the ideal thing