[Illustration:  “The Gallery Among the Huge Vases of Palms and Creepers.”]

Yet on the Sunday—­our final day at the bungalow—­you would have thought that the gods had assembled together to hold sweet converse; and, when we lounged in the shadow of the invisible Ida, never looked the earth more fair to us.  The whole land was in blossom from the summit to the sea; the gardeners, as they walked among their vines, prated of Sicily and sang songs of their Sun-land.  There was no chapel at hand, and no mass for the repose of souls that had been sorely troubled; but the charm of those young women—­they were salving our wounds as women know how to do—­and the voluptuous feast that was laid for us, when we emptied the fatal larder; the music, and the thousand arts employed to restore beauty and order out of the last night’s chaos, made us better than new men, and it taught us a lesson we never shall forget—­though from that hour to this, neither one nor the other of us, in any way, shape, or fashion whatever, has referred in the remotest degree to that eventful night in a Californian bungalow.

PRIMEVAL CALIFORNIA

“Primeval California” was inscribed on the knapsack of the Artist, on the portmanteau of Foster, the Artist’s chum, and on the fly-leaf of the note-book of the Scribe.  The luggage of the boisterous trio was checked through to the heart of the Red Woods, where a vacation camp was pitched.  The expected “last man” leaped the chasm that was rapidly widening between the city front of San Francisco and the steamer bound for San Rafael, and approached us—­the trio above referred to—­with a slip of paper in his hand.  It was not a subpoena; it was not a dun; it was a round-robin of farewells from a select circle of admirers, wishing us joy, Godspeed, success in art and literature, and a safe return at last.

The wind blew fair; we were at liberty for an indefinite period.  In forty minutes we struck another shore and another clime.  San Francisco is original in its affectation of ugliness—­it narrowly escaped being a beautiful city—­and its humble acceptation of a climate which is as invigorating as it is unscrupulous, having a peculiar charm which is seldom discovered until one is beyond its spell.  Sailing into the adjacent summer,—­summer is intermittent in the green city of the West,—­we passed into the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, the great landmark of the coast.  The admirable outline of the mountain, however, was partially obscured by the fog, already massing along its slopes.