g
a memorial seat to poor Frank Norris. With the assistance of a couple
of men I have gathered a lot of boulders from the bed of a stream, and
from these we have fashioned a bench to hold six or eight people, and
set it where the view is glorious. I have helped lay the stones, and
have dabbled in mortar until I can hardly use my hands to write. This
sort of work is so much more interesting than scratching with a pen.
In the joy of even so poor a creation I forget the sad purpose of it,
and am as happy as one hopes to be who has lived as long as I."

Before these two friends--he in the springtime of his days, she in
the mellow autumn of maturity--passed away, they were persuaded to
record their voices in a phonograph, but it was a useless effort, for
no one who loved them has ever been able to endure to listen to their
spirit voices, as it were, speaking from the other world.

CHAPTER XI

TRAVELS IN MEXICO AND EUROPE.

Eight years, divided between the house "like a fort on a cliff" in San
Francisco and the sylvan solitude of the little ranch tucked away in
its corner in the mountains of the Holy Cross, slipped by happily
enough. Now and again the wandering mood came back, but, except for
one visit to France and England, Mrs. Stevenson confined her
journeyings to the American continent.

One of these excursions led her to Mexico--a country that she found
more interesting than any she had ever visited in Europe. Sometimes I
think this may have been because of some primitive element in her own
nature that responded to the traditions of that strange land--so aged
in history, so young in civilization--but, anyway, she told me that
she felt a genuine thrill there such as she had never experienced in
any of the historic places of the Old World. At the tomb of Napoleon
she remained cold, but at the "tree of the sad night," where Cortes is
said to have wept bitter tears on that dark and rainy night away back
in 1520, her imagination was deeply touched. At the church of
Guadalupe she looked at the pitifully crude paintings and other
thank-offerings of the simple devotees with deep and sympathetic
interest.

Much more interesting than the city of Mexico she found the quaint and
ancient town of Cuernavaca, where Maximilian was wont to come with his
Empress to enjoy the delights of the famous Borda Gardens. These
gardens, though fallen from their first high estate, were still very
beautiful at the time of Mrs. Stevens