But always I cried out in my helpless, hopeless agony, “Yet why--why--why?” It is the cry of the Soul from the first day of creation. I turned my back on the far East, and set my face towards America. * * * * * Then---- Then I started on a trip through California and old Mexico. My health was broken. My marriage with Lucille was postponed. On the Nevada desert our train was side-tracked early one morning to allow the passing of the eastbound express which was late. A vast level plain stretched its weary way in every direction. Only the twin lines of steel and the dark-red section house showed that the White Man’s footsteps had ever found their way into the stillness of the dreary plains. We had fifteen minutes to wait. I got out with others and walked up and down the wind-blown track, smoking my cigar and spinning pebbles, which I picked up from the road-bed, at a jack-rabbit in the sagebrush across the way. The wind made a mournful sound through the telegraph wires, but a wild canary sang sweetly from the top of a tall greasewood--sang as if to drown the wind’s dirge. Dull grays were about us; and we were hemmed in by mountains rugged, and rough, and dull gray, with here and there touches of dull reds and browns. On their very tops patches of snow lay, far--far up on the heights. Miles down the valley we could see the coming train. A few minutes later the conductor called to us “All aboard!” and I swung myself up on the steps of the last sleeping-car as we began to move slowly down toward the western end of the switch. There was a roar and a clatter--a flash of faces at the windows--a rush of wind and dust whirled up by the whirling wheels--and, as the Eastern Express shot by, I saw (on the rear platform of the last car) him, between whom and myself a Soul was shared. The conductor stepped up on the platform where I stood, and caught me by the arm as I reeled. “The high altitude,” he said, “makes a good many folks get dizzy. You’d better go inside and sit down.” * * * * * Then again. On a ferry-boat crossing the bay from the Oakland pier to San Francisco. I had just returned that morning from a four-months’ tour of Mexico. It was raining dismally, and everything about the shipping on the bay was dripping and dreary. Gray-white sea gulls circled and screamed; darting and dipping, they followed our wake, or dropped down into the foam churned up by the wheels. Winds--wet and salty, and fresh from the sea--tugged at our mackintoshes; and flapped the gowns and wraps of the women where--huddled together away from the rail--we stood under shelter. Sheets of flying fog--dense, dark and forbidding--went by; gray ghosts of the ocean’s uneasy dead. And back of the curtain of falling waters and fog, whistles shrieked shrilly, and the fog horns uttered their hideous sounds. Bellowing--moaning; moaning--bellowing; suddenly still.