“That king,” said he, “is a dandy. He is credited with being the cleverest and most adroit politician in England, and I believe it, or he could never have steered his canoe out of that baccarat whirlpool. If Dave Morning’s dynamics should sort of blow him out of a job at home, let him come over here, and in one year I will back him at long odds to get the nomination for the best office in the county from either the Democratic or Republican convention, and, maybe, from both. What a roaring team he and Jack Dodge and Sam Davis would make for a county canvass! Jack to do the fiddling and dancing, Sam the all-around lying, and Edward the hand shaking and the setting ’em up for the boys!” The ample gardens of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara were stripped for the decoration of the banquet hall. All day flowers were arriving by the train load, and several hundred floral artists were at work in the great dining room. The effect was surpassingly beautiful. Suspended from the great dome by ropes of smilax was a gigantic figure of Peace, wrought in white calla lilies, bearing in her right hand a branch from an olive tree, while her left held to her lips a trumpet of yellow jasmine. On the walls the arms of all nations were wrought in camellias, carnations, fleur-de-lis, and roses of every hue. The music and the menu were both incomparable, and, in accordance with the later and better practice of great dinners, formal speech making was altogether dispensed with. The next morning the shores of Coronado Beach were black with people, and in the great hotel every piazza and window facing southward or westward was occupied. There was a light breeze blowing from the north as the _Petrel_ left her berth and rapidly mounted in the air to a height of seven thousand feet, which altitude she achieved with her fans in seven minutes’ time. She then put her propellers in motion and was soon a mere speck against the cloudless sky, scarcely discernible by the most powerful glasses. But though out of sight she soon made her existence and her work known to the multitude. In thirty-five minutes from the time she left her berth, she had compassed a mile and a half in height and sixteen miles of distance and was hovering over Coronado Islands. In twenty minutes more six men on board of her had thrown over the two hundred potentite shells, and in half an hour thereafter the aerial wonder was again resting quietly on the peninsula.