“All my yearnin’s an’ dreams seemed to pall on me. Where was the joy? Wansfell, the only joy I had was in findin’ some poor beggar or bootblack or poor family, an’ givin’ them gold. The great city was full of them. An’ I gave away thousands of dollars. God knows _that_ was some good. An’ now I see if I could have stuck it out, livin’ among such people, I might have been of some use in the world. But, man! livin’ was not possible in New York. All night the hotels roared. All night the streets hummed an’ clanged. There was as many people rushin’ around by night as by day, an’ different from each other, like bats an’ hawks. I got restless an’ half sick. I couldn’t sleep. I seemed suffocatin’ for fresh air. I wanted room to breathe. When I looked up at night I couldn’t see the stars. Think of that for a desert man! “At last I knew I couldn’t find what I wanted in New York, an’ I couldn’t hunt any longer there. I had to leave. My plans called for goin’ abroad. _Then_ came a strange feelin’ that I must have had all the time, but didn’t realize. The West called me back. I seemed to want the Middle West, where I’d planned to buy the green farm. But you know I’m a man who sticks to his mind, when it’s made up. There were London, Paris, Rome I’d dreamed about an’ had planned to see. Well, I had a hell of a fight with somethin’ in myself before I could get on that ship. Right off then I got seasick. Wansfell, the bite of a rattlesnake never made me half as sick as that dirty-gray, windy sea. The trip across was a nightmare.... London was a dreary place as big as the Mohave an’ full of queer fishy-eyed people whom I couldn’t understand. But I liked their slow, easy-goin’ ways. Then Paris.... Wansfell, that Paris was a wonderful, glitterin’ beautiful city, an’ if a city had been a place for me, Paris would have been it. But I was lost. I couldn’t speak French--couldn’t learn a word. My tongue refused to twist round their queer words. All the same, I saw what I’d set out to see.... Wansfell, if a man fights despair for the women of the world, he’ll get licked in Paris. An’ the reason is, there you see the same thing in the homely, good, an’ virtuous little wives as you see in those terrible, fascinatin’, dazzlin’ actresses. What that somethin’ is I couldn’t guess. But you like all Frenchwomen. They’re gay an’ happy an’ square. If I applied the truth of this desert to these Frenchwomen, I’d say the somethin’ so fascinatin’ in them is that the race is peterin’ out an’ the women are dyin’ game.