ve orders for the book from army
officers, and then one day I received orders from people in Arizona and
I awoke to the fact that Arizona was no longer the land of my memories.
I began to receive booklets telling me of projected railroads, also
pictures of wonderful buildings, all showing progress and prosperity.

And then came letters from some Presidents of railroads whose lines ran
through Arizona, and from bankers and politicians and business men
of Tucson, Phoenix and Yuma City. Photographs showing shady roads and
streets, where once all was a glare and a sandy waste. Letters from
mining men who knew every foot of the roads we had marched over;
pictures of the great Laguna dam on the Colorado, and of the quarters of
the Government Reclamation Service Corps at Yuma.

These letters and pictures told me of the wonderful contrast presented
by my story to the Arizona of today; and although I had not spared that
country, in my desire to place before my children and friends a vivid
picture of my life out there, all these men seemed willing to forgive
me and even declared that my story might do as much to advance their
interests and the prosperity of Arizona as anything which had been
written with only that object in view.

My soul was calmed by these assurances, and I ceased to be distressed by
thinking over the descriptions I had given of the unpleasant conditions
existing in that country in the seventies.

In the meantime, the San Francisco Chronicle had published a good review
of my book, and reproduced the photograph of Captain Jack Mellon, the
noted pilot of the Colorado river, adding that he was undoubtedly one of
the most picturesque characters who had ever lived on the Pacific Coast
and that he had died some years ago.

And so he was really dead! And perhaps the others too, were all gone
from the earth, I thought when one day I received a communication from
an entire stranger, who informed me that the writer of the review in
the San Francisco newspaper had been mistaken in the matter of Captain
Mellon's death, that he had seen him recently and that he lived at San
Diego. So I wrote to him and made haste to forward him a copy of my
book, which reached him at Yuma, on the Colorado, and this is what he
wrote:

YUMA, Dec. 15th, 1908.

My dear Mrs. Summerhayes:

Your good book and letter came yesterday p. m., for which accept my
thanks. My home is not in San Diego, but in Coronado, across the bay
from San Die