However, after two weeks in the metropolis, eight or nine days on the Atlantic, two or three in New York, and five on the transcontinental trains, he found himself again in California and ready to make from there his second start to the far-away lands from which his loudest calls seemed to come--ready, that is, except for one thing. He was now, let us remember, at this beginning of the year 1899, not yet twenty-five years old, not that by half a year, indeed, and a half year could mean, as we have already seen, a great deal in his life. And he was a boy-man with a record already behind him of achievement and a position already in his hands of much responsibility and large salary. So he declared that the time had now come for the carrying out of the decision he had made in his college days of four years before. It was the little matter, you will promptly guess, and guess correctly, of marrying the girl of the geology department. He arrived in San Francisco the first of February, 1899. He spent the next few days in Monterey, "the old Pacific capital" of Stevenson's charming sketch, but of chief interest to Hoover as the place where Lou Henry--that was her name--lived. And here they were married at noon of Friday, February 10. At two o'clock they left for San Francisco, and at noon the next day sailed for the empire of China. Into the sleepy, half Mexican, historic town on the curving sands of the shores of the blue Bay of Monterey this swift, breathlessly swift, boy engineer had come from distant Australia, by way of Marseilles and London, had clutched up the beautiful daughter of the respected town banker, and was now carrying her off to distant China, where she was to live in all the state becoming the wife of the Director-General of Mines of the Celestial Empire. It was a bit too much for the old Pacific capital, which did not know--for it was not told--that the sudden appearance of the meteor bridegroom had been preceded by many astronomical warnings in the way of electric messages that came to the prospective bride from Australia and London and New York. Anyway, it wasn't quite fair to the town, which tries to maintain old Mexican traditions, that go back to Spain, of a full assortment of festivities incident to any proper marrying. But Monterey has long been reconciled to this missed opportunity, and now reveals a just pride as the home town of the woman who has played such an active role in the career of her distinguished husband. The hurrying couple, at least, had time for breath-taking--and honeymoon--when once on board ship. For it is a month's voyaging from San Francisco to China--or, at least, was then. They had for seat-mates at table Frederick Palmer, the war correspondent, and wife, which was the beginning of a friendship that still endures. And there were for other interesting companions a secretary of our legation at Peking and his wife, and a missionary pair who may or may not have survived the Boxer massacres.