One thing I do not consider a part of the joy of all the earth—­the neighbors’ dogs.  On the next hill-top is an Airedale with a voice like a fog-horn.  He is an ungainly creature and thoroughly disillusioned, because his family keep him locked up in a wire-screened tennis-court, where he barks all day and nearly all night.  He can watch the motors on the coast road from one corner of his cage, and that seems to drive him almost wild.  He ought to realize how much better off he is than the Lady of Shalott, who only dared to watch the highway to Camelot in a mirror!  Sometimes he has a bad attack of lamentation in the night—­he is quite Jeremiah’s peer at that—­and then we all call his house on the telephone.  You can see the lights flash on in the various cottages and hear the tinkle of the bell, as we each in turn voice our indignation.  Once I even saw a white-robed figure in the road across the canyon, and heard a voice borne on the night wind, “For heaven’s sake, shut that dog up.”  We all bore it with Christian resignation when his family decided to take a motor camping trip, Prince to be included in the party.  He is probably even now waking the echoes on Lake Tahoe, or barking himself hoarse at the Bridal Veil Falls in the Yosemite, but thank goodness we can’t hear him quite as far away as that.

I dare say that he might be a perfectly nice, desirable dog if he had had any early training.  Our own “pufflers,” as the boys call “Rags” and “Tags,” their twin silver-haired Yorkshire terriers, could tell him what a restraining influence the force of early training has on them, even on moonlight nights.

Prince is the worst affliction we have had, but not the only one.  The people on the mountain-slope above us acquired a yellowish collie-like dog to scare away coyotes.  He ought to have been a success at it, though I don’t know just what it takes to scare a coyote.  At any rate, he used to bark long and grievously about dawn in the road across the canyon.  One morning I was almost frantic with the irregularity of his outbursts.  It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Suddenly a rifle shot rang out; a spurt of yellow dust, a streak of yellow dog, and silence!  I rushed to J——­’s room, to find him with the weapon, still smoking, in his hands.  I begged him not to start a neighborhood feud, even if we never slept after dawn.  I even wept.  He laughed at me.  “I didn’t shoot at him,” he said.  “I shot a foot behind him, and I’ve given him a rare fright!” He had, indeed.  The terror of the coyotes never came near us again.

As to servants, the subject is so rich that I can only choose.  Unfortunately, the glory of the view does not make up to them for the lack of town bustle and nightly “movies,” so it isn’t always easy to make comfortable summer arrangements.  As you start so you go on, for changing horses in mid-stream has ever been a parlous business.  A temperamental high-school boy who came to drive the