Ah me!  It is an ungracious task to prick the bubble reputation, had I not been dazzled with dreams of Monterey from my youth up!  Was I piqued when I, then a citizen of San Francisco—­one of the three hundred thousand,—­when I read in “The Handbook of Monterey” these lines:  “San Francisco is not too firmly fixed to fear the competition of Monterey”?

Well, I may as well confess myself a false prophet.  The town fell into the hands of Croesus, and straightway lost its identity.  It is now a fashionable resort, and likely to remain one for some years to come.  Where now can one look for the privacy of old?  Then, if one wished to forget the world, he drove through a wilderness to Cypress Point.  Now ’tis a perpetual picnic ground, and its fastnesses are threaded by a drive which is one of the features of Del Monte Hotel life.  It was solemn enough of yore.  The gaunt trees were hung with funereal mosses; they had huge elbows and shoulders, and long, thin arms, with skeleton fingers at the ends of them, that bore knots that looked like heads and faces such as Dore portrayed in his fantastic illustrations.  They were like giants transformed,—­they are still, no doubt; for the tide of fashion is not likely to prevail against them.

They stand upon the verge of the sea, where they have stood for ages, defying the elements.  The shadows that gather under their locked branches are like caverns and dungeons and lairs.  The fox steals stealthily away as you grope among the roots, that writhe out of the earth and strike into it again, like pythons in a rage.  The coyote sits in the edge of the dusk, and cries with a half-human cry—­at least he did in my dead day.  And here are corpse-like trees, that have been naked for ages; every angle of their lean, gray boughs seems to imply something.  Who will interpret these hieroglyphics?  Blood-red sunsets flood this haunted wood; there is a sound as of a deep-drawn sigh passing through it at intervals.  The moonlight fills it with mystery; and along its rocky front, where the sea-flowers blossom and the sea-grass waves its glossy locks, the soul of the poet and of the artist meet and mingle between shadowless sea and cloudless sky, in the unsearchable mystery of that cypress solitude.

So have I seen it; so would I see it again.  When I think on that beach at Monterey—­the silent streets, the walled, unweeded gardens—­a wistful Saturday-afternoon feeling comes over me.  I hear again the incessant roar of the surf; I see the wheeling gulls, the gray sand; the brown, bleak meadows; the empty streets; the shops, tenantless sometimes—­for the tenant is at dinner or at dominos; the other shops that are locked forever and the keys rusted away;—­whenever I think of her I am reminded of that episode in Coulton’s diary, where he, as alcalde, was awakened from a deep sleep at the dead of night by a guard, a novice, and a slave to duty.  With no little consternation, the alcalde hastened to unbar the door.  The guard, with a respectful salute, said:  “The town, sir, is perfectly quiet.”