It is a far cry from blonde stars to funerals, but J——­ feels no change of subject, however abrupt, is out of place when talking of his “first night,” so I would like to say a few words about that branch of California business.  In the first place, no one ever dies out here until they are over eighty, unless they are run over or meet with some other accident.  J——­ says that old ladies in the seventies, driving electrics, are the worst menace to life that we have.  When our four-score years and ten have been lived—­probably a few extra for good measure—­an end must come, but a California funeral is so different!  A Los Angeles paper advertises “Perfect Funerals at Trust Prices.”  We often meet them bowling gayly along the boulevards, the motor hearse maintaining a lively pace, which the mourners are expected to follow.  The nearest J——­ ever came to an accident was suddenly meeting one on the wrong side of the road, and the funeral chauffeur’s language was not any more scriptural than J——­’s.  As we were nowhere near eighty, we felt we had a lot of life still coming to us and gave grateful thanks for our escape.

Life is a good thing.  I maintain it in the face of pessimists, but it is a particularly good thing in California, with its sunshine and its possibilities.  I shan’t go on because I believe I have said something of this same sort before.  It makes you ready for the next thing, whatever that may be, and you feel pretty sure that it will be interesting.  It’s a kind of perpetual “night before Christmas” feeling.  Some time ago when I picked up my evening paper my eye fell on this advertisement: 

“Wanted:  A third partner in a well-established trading business in the South Seas.  Schooner now fitting out in San Francisco to visit the Islands for cargo of copra, pearls, sandalwood, spices, etc.  Woman of forty or over would be considered for clerical side of enterprise, with headquarters on one of the islands.  This is a strictly business proposition—­no one with sentiment need apply.”

When I read it first I couldn’t believe it.  I rubbed my eyes and read it again.  There it was next to the Belgian hares, the bargains in orange groves and the rebuilt automobiles.  It was fairly reeking with romance.  I felt like finding an understudy for my job at home, boarding the schooner and sailing blithely out of the Golden Gate.  The South Seas is the next stop beyond Southern California.  I think I could keep their old books, though I never took any prizes in arithmetic at school.  How amusing it would be to enter in my ledger instead of “two dozen eggs” and “three pounds of butter,” “two dozen pearls at so much a dozen” (or would they be entered by ounces?) and “fifty pounds of sandalwood,” or should I reckon that by cords?  I could find out later.  I would wear my large tortoise-shell spectacles (possibly blinders in addition), and I should attend strictly to business for a while, but when a full moon rose