When the Prodigal Son became hungry he came to himself. So it was with Schuster. Living on two slices of bacon per day (eaten raw for fear of kindling fires) is what might be called starving under difficulties, and within a week Schuster was remembering and longing for floor-walking and respectability. Within a month of his strange disappearance he was back in San Francisco again knocking at the door of his aunt’s house on Geary street. A week later he was taken on again at his old store, in his old position, his unexcused absence being at length, and under protest, condoned by a remembrance of "long and faithful service." Schuster picked up his old life again precisely where he had left it on the second of May, six weeks previously—picked it up and stayed by it, calmly, steadily, uneventfully. The day before he died he told this story to his maiden aunt, who told it to me, with the remark that it was, of course, an absurd lie. Perhaps it was. One thing, however, remains to tell. I repeated the absurd lie to a friend of mine who is in the warden’s office over at the prison of San Quentin. I mentioned Schuster’s name. "Schuster! Schuster!" he repeated; "why we had a Schuster over here once—a long time ago, though. An old fellow he was, and a bad egg, too. Commuted for life, though. Son was a barber at the Palace Hotel." "What was old Schuster up for?" I asked. "Highway robbery," said my friend. *"*_*Boom*_*"* San Diego in Southern California, is the largest city in the world. If your geographies and guide-books and encyclopædias have told you otherwise, they have lied, or their authors have never seen San Diego. Why, San Diego is nearly twenty-five miles from end to end! Why, San Diego has more miles of sidewalk, more leagues of street railways, more measureless lengths of paved streets, more interminable systems of sewer-piping, than has London or Paris or even—even—even Chicago (and I who say so was born in Chicago, too)! There are statelier houses in San Diego than in any other "of the world’s great centres," more spacious avenues, more imposing business blocks, more delicious parks, more overpowering public buildings, the pavements are better laid, the electric lighting is more systematic, the railroad and transportation facilities more accommodating, the climate is better than the Riviera, the days are longer, the nights shorter, the men finer, the women prettier, the theatres more attractive, the restaurants cheaper, the wines more sparkling, "business opportunities" lie in wait for the unfortunate at dark street-corners and fly at his throat till he must fain fight them off. Life is one long, glad fermentation. There is no darkness in San Diego, nor any more night. Incidentally corner lots are desirable.