ent, but I added, by way of parenthesis, "and
who else will be present?" knowing well enough that one uncongenial
spirit might be the undoing of us all. To this Bartholomew responded,
"No one but ourselves, old fellow; now don't be queer." He knew well
enough my aversion to certain elements unavoidable even in the best
society, and how I kept very much to myself, except on Monday nights
when we all smoked and laughed with the Colonel--whose uncommonly
charming wife was abroad for the summer; and on Tuesday and Saturday
nights, when I was at the club, and on Wednesdays, when I did the
theatricals of the town, and on Thursdays and Fridays--but never mind!
girls were out of the question in my case, and he knew that the bachelor
hall where I preside was as difficult of access as a cloister. I might
not have given my word without further deliberation, had not the
impetuous Colonel seized us bodily and borne us back into his
smoking-room, where he was about to shatter the wax on a flagon of wine,
a brand of fabulous age and excellence. Bartholomew nodded to Alf, Alf
passed the good news to Croesus, for we were all at the Colonel's by
common consent, and so it happened that the compact was made for
Thursday.

That Thursday, at 4 p.m. we were on our way to the station at 4:30; the
town-houses were growing few and far between, as the wheels of the
coaches spun over the iron road. At five o'clock the green fields of the
departed spring, already grown bare and brown, rolled up between us and
the horizon. California is a naked land and no mistake, but how
beautiful in her nakedness! An hour later we descended at School-house
station; such is the matter-of-fact pet-name given to a cluster of dull
houses, once known by some melodious but forgotten Spanish appellation.
The ranch wagon awaited us; a huge springless affair, or if it had
springs they were of that aggravating stiffness that adds insult to
injury. Excellent beasts dragged us along a winding, dusty road, over
hill, down dale, into a land that grew more and more lonely; not exactly
"a land where it was always afternoon," but apparently always a little
later in the day, say 7 p.m. or thereabouts. We were rapidly wending our
way towards the coast, and on the breezy hill-top a white fold of
sea-fog swept over and swathed us in its impalpable snow. Oh! the chill,
the rapturous agony of that chill. Do you know what sea-fog is? It is
the bodily, spiritual and temporal life of Cali