It was this position he had won in a community where he had experienced the unique sensation of being a pioneer in at the rebirth of a great city, as well as the outdoor sports that kept him fit, that had endeared California to Ruyler, and in time caused him whimsically to visualize New York as a sternly accusing instead of a beckoning finger. Long before he found time to play polo at Burlingame he had conceived a deep respect for a climate where a man might ride horseback, shoot, drive a racing car, or tramp, for at least eight months of the year with no menace of sudden downpour, and hardly a change in the weight of his clothes. To-day the rain was dashing against his windows and the wind howled about the exposed angles of his house with that personal fury of assault with which storms brewed out in the vast wastes of the Pacific deride the enthusiastic baptism of a too confident explorer. All he could see of the bay was a mad race of white caps, and dark blurs which only memory assured him were rocky storm-beaten islands; mountain tops, so geological tradition ran, whose roots were in an unquiet valley long since dropped from mortal gaze. The waves were leaping high against the old forts at the entrance to the Golden Gate, and occasionally he saw a small craft drift perilously near to the rocks. But he loved the wild weather of San Francisco, for he was by nature an imaginative man and he liked to think that he would have followed the career of letters had not the traditions of the great commercial house of Ruyler and Sons, forced him to carry on the burden.