I had never seen the work of McComus before, and I was spellbound. One after another he showed us his Arizona landscapes, with their pure almost irridescent colors. I am aware that I am given to enthusiasm, but here is something to be enthusiastic about. Men who produce work at this level lend to the country they belong to a reflected glory that should arouse much national pride. Here is a man that Paris or London would acclaim, and who should not be allowed his life of indolent contentment on the wild Pacific Coast. How strange a country this is, how full of surprises and unexpectedness! That one should drop into a house by the wayside, and find so great an artist! TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1921. _San Francisco._ Dick Tobin telephoned me to come in early to San Francisco as he had something he thought interesting for me to do. I picked him up at the Hibernian Bank and he took me down to the ferry, gave me a ticket, a bunch of violets and typewritten directions, and sent me off to St. Quentin prison across the bay. At the prison, which stands up like a great fortress on a promontory, I introduced myself to Warden Johnston. He and Mrs. Johnston gave me lunch at their house above the flowered terraces, sunbathed, with its wonderful view of the bay. On their verandah two grey-flannelled prisoners were tying up the Bouganvillia creeper. Inside we were waited on at table by a Chinaman who has a life sentence. I asked his crime ... he was just a “Tongman.” After lunch the Warden handed me over to Miss Jackson who is in charge of the Women’s Section, and for an hour I sat and talked in their little sitting room, with a group of women prisoners. Their bedrooms were like cubicles in a girl’s school, small, simply furnished, full of personal knickknacks, and not at all suggestive of a prison cell. Their clothes were blue and white narrow striped linen, made pretty well as they liked. Miss Jackson, I found a most interesting character. Full of insight and clairvoyance, full of deep human sympathy, understanding and kindness. One realized how tremendously these caged souls were hers to help or hurt, and how much more terrible their fate would be if the Wardress were hard and without understanding. But Miss Jackson talked to me of some of them (before I met them) with real interest and even affection. I asked her whether a life sentence case was as easy to manage as one who had done a lesser crime. Her reply was illuminating. She said that whereas a life sentence was pronounced on an individual who might be clean of character but for the one desperate deed, prompted by God knows what passionate provocation, the lesser criminal on the other hand might be an habitual petty malefactor who had merely chanced to be caught on the hundredth act!