red yards' range, and you bet they don't get much nearer
than that alone."

A huge sign shrieked of Maudsley Court. "Get a grin!" was its first
advice.

"They all try for a catchword--every one of 'em," explained Baker.
"You'll see all kinds in the ads; some pretty good, most of 'em rotten."

"They seem to have made a start, anyway," observed Bob, indicating a new
cottage half way down the street. It was a super-artistic structure,
exhibiting the ends of huge brown beams at all points. Baker laughed.

"That's what it's intended to seem," said he. "That's the come-on house.
It's built by the spider. It's stick-um for the flies. 'This is going to
be a high-brow proposition,' says the intending purchaser; 'look at the
beautiful house already up. I must join this young and thriving colony.'
Hence this settled look."

He waved his hand abroad. Dotted over the low, rounded hills of the
charming landscapes were new and modern bungalows. They were spaced
widely, and each was flanked by an advertising board and guarded by a
pair of gates shutting their private thoroughfares from the country
highways. Between them showed green the new crops.

"Nine out of ten come-on houses," said Baker, "and all exclusive. If you
can't afford iron gates, you can at least put up a pair of shingled
pillars. It's the game."

"Will these lots ever be sold?" asked Bob.

"Out here, yes," replied Baker. "That's part of the joke. The methods
are on the blink, but the goods insist on delivering themselves. Most of
these fellows are just bunks or optimists. All hands are surprised when
things turn out right. But if _all_ the lots are ever sold, Los Angeles
will have a population of five million."

They boarded an inward-bound trolley. Bob read the devices as they
flashed past. "Hill-top Acres," he read near a street plastered against
an apparently perpendicular hill. "Buy before the rise!" advised this
man's rival at its foot. The true suburbs strung by in a panorama of
strange little houses--imitation Swiss chalets jostling bastard Moorish,
cobblestones elbowing plaster--a bewildering succession of forced
effects. Baker caught Bob's expression.

"These are workingmen's and small clerks' houses," he said quietly.
"Pretty bad, eh? But they're trying. Remember what they lived in back
East."

Bob recalled the square, painted, ugly, featureless boxes built all
after the same pattern of dreariness. He looked on this gay bewilderment
of bad taste