Just as soon as you cross the Arizona line you discover that you have entered the climate belt. As your train whizzes past the monument that marks the boundary an earnest-minded passenger leans over, taps you on the breastbone and informs you that you are now in California, and wishes to know, as man to man, whether you don't regard the climate as about the niftiest article in that line you ever experienced! At the hotel the young lady of the telephone switchboard, who calls you in the morning, plugs in the number of your room; and when you drowsily answer the bell she informs you that it is now eight-thirty and--What do you think of the climate? The boy who sells you a paper and the youth who blackens your shoes both show solicitude to elicit your views upon this paramount subject. At breakfast the waiter finds out--if he can--how you like the climate before finding out how you like your eggs. When you pay your bill on going away the clerk somehow manages to convey the impression that the charges have been remarkably moderate considering what you have enjoyed in the matter of climate. Punching your round-trip ticket on the train starting East, the conductor has a few well-merited words to speak on behalf of the climate of the Glorious Southland, the same being the favorite pet name of the resident classes for the entire lower end of the state of California. Everybody is doing it, including press, pulpit and general public. The weather story--beg pardon, the climate story--is the most important thing in the daily paper, especially if a blizzard has opportunely developed back East somewhere and is available for purposes of comparison. At Los Angeles, which is the great throbbing heart of the climate belt, I went as a guest to a stag given at the handsome new clubhouse of a secret order renowned the continent over for its hospitality and its charities. We sat, six or seven hundred of us, in a big assembly hall, smoked cigars and drank light drinks, and witnessed some corking good sparring bouts by non-professional talent. There were two or three ministers present--fine, alert representatives of the modern type of city clergymen. When eleven o'clock came the master of ceremonies announced the toast, To Our Absent Brothers! and called upon one of those clergymen to respond to it.