Four people sat in the big, shining automobile. Three of them were men. The fourth was a little girl. The little girl's name was Maida Westabrook. The three men were "Buffalo" Westabrook, her father, Dr. Pierce, her physician, and Billy Potter, her friend. They were coming from Marblehead to Boston.

It was the morning after the shipwreck. The five men still lay where they had slept. A long time had passed since anybody had spoken. A long time had passed since anybody had moved. Indeed, it, looked almost as if they would never speak or move again. So bruised and bloodless of skin were they, so bleak and sharp of feature, so stark and hollow of eye, so rigid and moveless of limb that they might have been corpses. Mentally, too, they were almost moribund. They stared vacantly, straight out to sea. They stared with the unwinking fixedness of those whose gaze is caught in hypnotic trance.

The only drawback to writing about California is that scenery and climate-and weather even-will creep in. Inevitably anything you produce sounds like a cross between a railroad folder and a circus program. You can't discuss the people without describing their background; for they reflect it perfectly; or their climate, because it has helped to make them the superb beings they are. A tendency manifests itself in you to revel in superlatives and to wallow in italics.

California, which produces the maximum of scenery and the minimum of weather; California, which grows the biggest men, trees, vegetables and fleas in the world, and the most beautiful women, babies, flowers and fruits; California, which, on the side, delivers a yearly crop of athletes, boxers, tennis players, swimmers, runners and a yearly crop of geniuses, painters, sculptors, architects, authors, musicians, actors, producers and photographers; California, where every business man writes novels, or plays, or poetry, or all three; California, which has spawned the Coppa, Carmel and San...

-You've got to find something that will take up her mind, Jerome, - Dr. Pierce said, lowering his voice, -and you've got to be quick about it. Just what Greinschmidt feared has come-that languor-that lack of interest in everything. You've got to find something for her to do.- Dr. Pierce spoke seriously. He was a round, short man, just exactly as long any one way as any other. He had springy gray curls all over his head and a nose like a button. Maida thought that he looked like a very old but a very jolly and lovable baby. When he laughed-and he was always laughing with Maida-he shook all...