Our ride of four hours from Los Angeles to San Diego was rather warm, and after our arrival we cared to do little more than lounge about the station in the evening. Near by was a most inviting bathing-house, beautifully fitted up with all sorts of appliances for comfort, not the least of these being a superb swimming-pool, whose tempered waters were sending to us insinuating invitations to take a good plunge and enjoy the charms of their dark, silent depths. It was too soon after eating, and we put it all off until next day. When we men folk returned to our car from the adjacent bath-house, a feeling of gloom and melancholy settled down upon us. The "Lucania" was silent and lonely, save for the servants. Not another soul was visible. The ladies had all disappeared! Here was an alarming state of affairs. Those who had wives, were as though they had them not, and those who had not wives, were as though they had. We were all alike disturbed and miserable at the unaccountable absence of our better halves. What had become of them? We seemed to be quite on the outskirts of San Diego. The wide streets, stretching away in darkness, looked terrible and forbidding. Who could tell what desperado might not have made away with them? It would be a mere matter of a sudden stoop down from a horse, perhaps, a seizure by a pair of strong arms, a wild ride over the boundless plain, and misery would settle down upon us as another mysterious disappearance had to be recorded, and remain possibly forever unexplained. We called a council of war, so to speak. We determined to investigate, and boldly plunged into the unknown town in search of our lost ones. Every man we met had the possibilities in him, to our excited imaginations, of a double-dyed cut-throat; every saloon was a gate of Hades; but we bravely pushed on. We found ourselves soon in rather an attractive street. Shops were gay with life. The ever-present electric lamps gave us their cold glitter and their fantastic shadows, until at last, joyful sight, we saw all our ladies shopping to their hearts' content in a Chinese curio shop, where a great, bland, round-faced Chinaman, like a six-foot baby, was all smiles and attention to the purchasing crowd. We joined them as if nothing had happened, and remained with them until we saw them safe back. All the preceding is summed up in one of the ladies' diaries briefly thus: "We arrived at San Diego at 6 P.M. After tea the ladies of the party started out to _see the town_, visited two curio shops, and went back to the car before nine, and received a very severe scolding for going off by ourselves." The italics in the above are mine. I think the ladies served us right, for we should have awaited their pleasure; but who could have dreamed that they wanted to do anything more than rest after their fatiguing ride?