Driven from the cafeteria into the night, we motored fast and aimless, talking as we drove, talking, never ceasing, until we could drive no more. Our road led down a hill, straight like the road of the Nazarene swine, into the sea, and so we stopped; a great long white line of breakers confronted us, we left the car, and stood for a moment undecidedly. Then a long seaside bench came crawling past me. I thought for a moment that I was in madland. I remembered in a flash the sham village, the illusions of filmland, still so near me. Really one should not be surprised by anything any more. In the dim light I again looked at the walking seat and yet again, and then I realized the man who was sitting on it was really driving it. The seat was a motor seat. We jumped upon it and were carried miles, as it seemed to me, along the sea walk. In the distance were bright lights, we stopped when we reached them, and this was “Venice.” I have always longed to go to Venice, but I never knew it looked like this. Over-head a network of colored lights, and from no visible location, the music of a gramaphone. Before us a square stone stately building, called a “Bath house” and in large letters over a door “check babies here.” “Check” (I have learnt) is an American word which described what people do with their hats and umbrellas when they go into a restaurant. Further on, dazzled by the lights and laughter of Venice, we stopped for an ice-cream soda, and then took shots at sham rabbits and moving ducks with a rifle. Here too I was introduced for the first time to chewing gum, pleasant to chew, but unfortunately unpleasant to taste. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1921. The Goldwyn Studio Co., having arranged my reservations for me, sent a car to take me to the 8 P.M. train for San Francisco. When the hotel porter shouted down the line of parked cars: “Goldwyn Studio Car” the crowd of dinner arrivals simply stood still and stared. I had my parrot “General Baragan” on my shoulder and I stepped into the car with the self-consciousness of a recognized prominent film star! On the train I did as directed by my hosts-to-be: I sought out the director of the train and told him “the Lark” would stop in the morning at Burlingame. I hadn’t a notion where or what Burlingame was, except that my friends lived there, and the train was to be stopped. The director looked at me, in a curious way, as though I were a poor lunatic suffering from hallucination. He had been, he said, on the train for 25 years and it never yet had stopped at Burlingame. However, the train did stop there in the morning and deposited me and Dick and Louise and the parrot with all our luggage in the middle of the track and hurriedly sped away. Then Constance Tobin, whom I had not seen for 15 years and who had been a school-mate of mine at the convent in Paris, appeared with her husband to greet me. SIX DAYS LATER. _Burlingame._