With genial satisfaction the star boarder received the thanks of the Browns for having saved to them their cook, and, with simple pleasure in the result of his diplomacy, met the encomiums of his fellow-boarders. To this gracious and beautiful nature, replete with "peace and good-will to man," to help and serve was but "the natural way of living." CHAPTER X At mid-March, in this sun-loved land, the genial season far outdoes our own belated Northern May. Already, in Mesilla Valley, the peach, pear, and apricot buds of the orchard are showing white and pink. In the garden, rose-bushes are leaving out, and mocking-birds make the air sweet with song. "In the spring," said Leon Starr, parodying Tennyson one morning at the breakfast-table, "the Koshare fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Shalam. Why not make to-day our long-planned excursion to that famous colony?" "All right," responded the entire Koshare; and that afternoon a party of twelve set out from Alamo Ranch to explore that remarkable colony, some seven miles up the valley. A description of the place and an account of this excursion is copied verbatim by the present writer from the journal of one of the party. "To begin at the beginning," says the narrator, "the colony was started by one Dr. ----, a dentist from Philadelphia. He enlisted as a partner in his enterprise a man from that region of fads--Boston, Mass. To this chimera of the doctor's brain, the latter, a man of means, lent his approval, and, still more to the point, the money to carry out the doctor's plans. "Some few years ago the original founder of Shalam died, leaving to his partner the work of carrying out his half-tried experiment. "Mr. ---- lived on in the place, assuming its entire charge, and finally marrying the doctor's widow,--a lady of unusual culture and refinement, but having a bent towards occult fads, as Spiritualism, Mental Science, and their like. "Well, we arrived safely at Shalam, and were met by Mrs. ---- and a dozen or more tow-headed kids. It is noticeable that the whole twenty-seven children selected for this experiment have light hair and blue eyes. Mrs. ---- kindly presented us to her husband,--apparently a man of refined natural tendencies and fair intellectual culture, but evidently, like 'Miss Flite,' 'a little _m-m_, you know.' "Conventionally clothed, Mr. ---- would undoubtedly have been more than presentable; in his Shalam undress suit he was, to say the least, unique. "His long, heavy beard was somewhat unkempt. His feet were in sandals, without stockings. His dress consisted of a pair of white cotton pants, and a blouse of the same material, frogged together with blue tape, the ends hanging down over his left leg. Hitched somehow to his girdle was a plain watch-chain, which led to a pocket for his watch, on the front of his left thigh, placed just above the knee. When he wants time he raises the knee and takes out the watch, standing on one leg the while.