dish for the table, a garden or a house,
always appealed strongly to her, and as she plunged eagerly into the
business of planning and discussing with architects and contractors,
her interest in life rose again. As she remarked, "It is awfully
exciting to build a house." Mr. Willis Polk was the architect, but he
followed her design, which she made by building a little house out of
match-boxes on the corner of a table. The house was rather unusual in
its plan, flat-roofed, and with architecture somewhat "on the Mexican
order," as the contractor said. It fitted in well with the landscape
and gave one a feeling of home comfort and cheer within. She herself
said it was "like a fort on a cliff." Hidden from the street by a high
retaining wall and a colonnade embowered in vines was a beautiful
garden where she gradually collected rare plants from various parts of
the world. A wide stretch of emerald lawn filled the centre, and
around its borders were massed flowering shrubs and small
trees--low-growing varieties purposely chosen in order not to hide the
sea view from the windows. Here a climbing syringa brought from the
romantic Borda gardens in Mexico, where the sad Empress Carlota used
to walk, flung out its tendrils gaily to the salt sea breeze, and
seemed never to miss the kindlier sun of its former home. At one side
there was a small cemented pool, the birds' drinking-place, where many
of the little creatures came to dip their bills and trill their
morning songs. In this quiet scented garden, kept safe from intruding
eyes on all sides by vine-covered walls and shrubbery, one might sit
and dream, reminded of the outside world only by the clanging of a
street-car bell or the distant whistle of an ocean steamer.

Within the walls of this house were a thousand objects gathered in her
wanderings in all sorts of strange places, but the greatest attraction
was the magnificent outlook over sea and land afforded by its
commanding position. From the flat roof one looked down on one side
upon the picturesque city, with its many hills and steeply climbing
streets, all a-glitter at night with a million twinkling lights, and
on the other upon the great sparkling expanse of the bay, alive with
craft of every sort, from the great ocean steamer just in from the
Orient to the tiny fisher boats, with their lateen sails, returning
with their day's catch from outside the "Heads." From the drawing-room
windows one could see the winking eye o