ls into account; and he also
realized that in those storms of spirit, which, at the time, he had
deprecated as ebullitions from a too mercurial nature, he had developed
more rapidly and precisely than many a man does by the exterior
catastrophe. And impersonally his admiration for the land of one set of
forefathers grew, although personally he remained cold. But he
cultivated all sorts and conditions of men, and hopefully trained
himself for the enthusiastic moment.

There were even times when, surrounded by his Rosewater friends, with
their lapses into quaint American speech and their intense localism, the
old Otis blood stirred in him very strongly; he caught himself using
phrases and figures that no doubt were an inheritance with his brain
cells. When the walls and furnishings of his room were obscured by
smoke, and there were half a dozen pairs of boots against his stove, it
was not difficult to fancy himself back in the old corner grocery on a
winter's night: his companions drinking apple cider, instead of rye
whiskey, and the orator of the moment sitting, by preference, on a
barrel, and munching crackers.

In San Francisco, which he visited twice a week on his return from
Berkeley, when alone in the long sloping streets swept with the
wind-driven rain, when the gutters roared and the houses looked as
deserted as their huddled beaten gardens, stories Isabel had told him of
the days of the Argonauts rose like ghosts in his brain, and he would
suddenly experience an overwhelming sensation of being at home. His
mother promptly dispelled these visions.

On the whole his time was too fully occupied to leave him more than
stray moments for the subtler mood; but as day after day, finally week
after week passed, with no prospect of fair weather, the monotony and
confinement affected his nerves, he tired of the unrelieved
companionship of men, and wished that Isabel would move in to Rosewater
for the winter months. He rang her up, when this brilliant idea occurred
to him, but was informed by Chuma that she was not in the house. On the
following day he telephoned again, and learned that she slept, on the
third that she was engaged in the delicate operation of extracting some
deleterious substance from the crop of a valuable hen. Whereupon he
swore vigorously, and vowed that he would forget her until the skies
cleared. But "the skies they were ashen and sober," and he caught
himself dreaming over his "Torts," or during one