d a not unmerited attack of cholera morbus from
over-indulgence in Casaba melon. But I keep wondering if Dinky-Dunk is
getting the right sort of things to eat, if he's lonely, and what he
does in his spare time.

And another conclusion I've come to is that men, much as I hate to
admit it, are built of a stronger fiber than women. They seem able to
stand shock better than the weaker sex. They are not so apt to go down
under defeat, to take the full count, as I have done. For I still have
to face the fact that I was a failure. Then I turned tail and fled
from the scene of my collapse. That flight, it is true, has brought me
a certain brand of peace, but it is not an enduring peace, for you
can't run away from what's in your own heart. And already I'm restless
and ill-at-ease. It's not so much that I'm dissatisfied; it's more
that I'm unsatisfied. There still seems to be something momentous left
out of the plan of things. I have the teasing feeling of confronting
something which is still impending, which is being withheld, which I
can not reach out for, no matter how I try, until the time is ripe....
Those rustling bamboos so close to the room where I sleep have begun
to bother me so much that I'm migrating to a new bedroom to-night.
"There's never anything without something!"

_Tuesday the Twenty-fourth_

Little Dinky-Dunk has adventured into illicit knowledge of his first
orange from the bough. It was one of Peter's low-hanging Valencias,
and seems to have left no ill-effects, though I prefer that all inside
matter be carefully edited before consumption by that small Red. So
Struthers hereafter must stand the angel with the flaming sword and
guard the gates that open upon that tree of forbidden fruit. Her own
colic, by the way, is a thing of the past, and at present she's
extremely interested in Pinshaw, who, she tells me, was once a
cabinet-maker in England, and came out to California for his health.
Struthers, as usual, is attempting to reach the heart of her new
victim by way of the stomach, and Pinshaw, apparently, is not
unappreciative, since he appears a little more punctually at his
watering and raking and gardening and has his ears up like a rabbit
for the first inkling of his lady-love's matutinal hand-out. And poor
old Whinstane Sandy, back at Alabama Ranch, is still making sheep's
eyes at the patches which Struthers once sewed on his breeks, like as
not, and staring with a mooni