Well, the less said the better about that museum. No wonder that our payment to get in was startling. We who had seen Kensington, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, the British Museum, the World's Fair, and about one hundred and twenty years of life between us, were greeted with shabby plaster reproductions of this, that, and the other; with jute-haired, manufactured monsters and other absurdities; the only thing that really commanded our respect being an American coon tolerably well stuffed and set up. We left disgusted. My reflection to my friend was that in such localities the best things were always "free shows," as I pointed out to the boundless Pacific; the hard, firm sand of the beach; and "The white arms out in the breakers, tirelessly tossing." But the melancholy of the museum had yet an outside chapter, for there were cages of wild beasts--miserable captives--and some wretched monkeys, whose capacity for the pathetic grief which was stamped upon their poor faces, turned one's thoughts inward to the tragedy of all life. The hotel was one of the many "largest hotels in the world," and is really a wonderful place. The great interior court, with glass roof covering in a collection of tropical trees and plants, was all a thing of beauty. Into this magic place quite a number of rooms opened. The dining-room, the ballroom, the verandas, the sun-parlors, the public rooms--all were vast, grandiose, and what one might say "perfectly splendid." I pity the taste of any one who could stand all this splendor, with its crowds of people, for any length of time. It seemed rather deserted when we were there; too late for one season, too early for another. This, and a certain shabby want of repair here and there, made the place seem somewhat sad. It is no easy matter to keep up a show place of such huge extent, with the hungry air of the great Pacific ever whetting its teeth upon every atom of its vast and profusely ornamented surface. While at San Diego, we noticed a weird effect common on the Pacific Coast, resulting from certain curious atmospheric conditions. The heavens at times are hung with a great veil of what is called "high fog." This bank of vapor shuts out all the upper sky. Between it and the earth is a stratum of hot, dry air, down through which the collected moisture above can never descend. It has to float off to the distant mountains. It has to be caught by their rocky arms, and turned into rain or snow, and then descend as rivers to the dry and dusty plains beneath. When we were starting out on our carriage ride in the morning, as I noticed this lowering mass of vapor above us, I asked the driver if it was going to rain. "Lord," said he, with an amused and bored shrug, "it will not rain here until next November!" It must have a queer effect upon people to be constantly held in the vise of such inevitable and square-cut atmospheric influences as these. XI