will look spindlin' with me, do the best I can, in
December, all growin' out-doors fillin' the air with fragrance.

Robert Strong said we must go to the Cliff House, and Tommy wanted to
see the seals.

Poor things! I felt bad to see 'em and to think there wuz a war of
extermination tryin' to be waged aginst 'em, because they interfered
with the rights of a few. One of the most interesting animals on the
Western continent! It seems too bad they're tryin' to wipe 'em out of
existence because the fishermen say they eat a sammon now and then.
Why shouldn't they who more than half belong to the water-world once
in a great while have a little taste of the good things of that world
as well as to have 'em all devoured by the inhabitants of dry land?
And they say that the seals eat sharks too--I should think that that
paid for all the good fish they eat. But to resoom. Tommy didn't think
of the rights or the wrongs of the seals, he had no disquietin'
thoughts to mar his anticipations, but he wonnered if he could put his
hands through 'em like he could his ma's seal muff. He thought that
they wuz muffs, silk lined--the idee! And he "wonnered" a sight when
he see the great peaceable lookin' creeters down in the water and on
the rocks, havin' a good time, so fur as we could see, in their own
world, and mindin' their own bizness; not tryin' to git ashore and
kill off the fishermen, because they ketched so many sammons. And
Tommy had to feed the seals and do everything he could do, Robert
Strong helpin' him in everything he undertook, and he "wonnered" if
they would ever be changed into muffs, and he "wonnered" if they would
like to be with "ribbon bows on."

At my request we went through Lone Mountain Cemetery, a low mountain
rising from the sandy beach full of graves shaded by beautiful trees
and myriads of flowers bending over the silent sleepers, the
resistless sea washing its base on one side--just as the sea of Death
is washing up aginst one side of Life--no matter how gay and happy it
is.

We rode home through a magnificent park of two thousand acres. Money
had turned the sandy beach into a wealth of green lawns, beautiful
trees and myriads of flowers. I had always sposed that them Eastern
Genis in the "Arabian Nights" had palaces and things about as grand
and luxurious as they make, but them old Genis could have got lots of
pinters in luxury and grand surroundin's if they'd seen the homes of
these nabobs in the environi