"Here is no thralldom of the past, but a trying of all things on their merits, and a searching of every proposal or established institution by the one test: Will it make life happier?" As he went on I was becoming conscious of an over-mastering desire to do something to stop him. I felt that I must interrupt to save my reason, so I pointed in the direction of Mount Tamalpais, and cried: "What is that, over there?" His eyes barely flickered towards the mountain, as he answered: "That is Mount Tamalpais which may be reached by a journey of nineteen miles by ferry, electric train and steam railroad. This lofty height rears itself a clean half-mile above the sparkling waters of our unrivaled bay. The mountain itself is a domain of delight. From its summit the visitor may see what might be termed the ground plan of the greatest landlocked harbor on the Pacific Ocean, and of the region surrounding it--a region destined to play so large a part in the affairs of men." "Good God!" I heard my companion ejaculate in an agonized whisper. But if our tormentor overheard he paid not the least attention. "We know," he continued in his sing-song tone, "that you will find here what you never found, and never can find, elsewhere. We shall try to augment your pleasure by indicating something of its origin in the city's romantic past. We shall give you your bearings in time and place. We shall endeavor to make smooth your path. We shall tell you what to seek and how to find it, and mayhap, what it means. We shall endeavor to endow you with the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to understand. In short, it is to help the visitor to comprehend, appreciate and enjoy 'the City Loved Around the World,' with its surpassingly beautiful environs, that this little handbook is issued." "That _what_?" shrieked my companion. The human guidebook calmly corrected himself. "That I am here with you to-day," he said. Through two interminable hours the thing went on and on like that. Several times, in the first hour, we tried to stop him by this means or that, but after awhile we learned that interruptions only opened other floodgates, and that it was best, upon the whole, to try to cultivate a state of inner numbness, and let his voice roll on. Sometimes I fancied that I was becoming passive and resigned. Then suddenly a wave of hate would come boiling up inside me, and my fingers would itch to be at the man's throat: to strangle him, not rapidly, but slowly, so that he would suffer. I wanted to see his tongue hang out, his eyes bulge, and his face turn blue; to see him swell up, as he kept generating words, inside, until at last, being unable to emit them, he should burst, like an overcharged balloon.