The Land of To-Morrow 1 3 



" Yes, sir. What do you take them for ? " 



The old Scotchman answered soberly : " I was of 

 the opeenion that they must be lunatic asylums." 



A big fellow, evidently a cattleman from Arizona, 

 burst into Homeric laughter. 



" Jee-roo-salem ! " he exclaimed. " That 's just 

 exactly what they air." 



Of course adversity trod hard upon the heels of 

 her twin, prosperity. The pendulum began to swing 

 the other way. We had had, as I have said, the 

 measles, and the body politic was enfeebled and 

 anaemic. Bad prices, an over-glutted market, 

 drought, frost, and blight, set their stigmata upon 

 us. " Laugh" says Mrs. Wilcox, " and the world 

 laughs with you : weep — and you weep alone." Our 

 laughter had rung through the East and Europe. 

 Our youth and high spirits had enchanted the older 

 civilisations. Now, recovering from a contagious 

 disease, we were constrained to mourn alone, in 

 silence and seclusion. The contrast between the 

 smiles of the past and the tears of the present would 

 have been pronounced humorous had it not been 

 pathetic. When I first came to the West, I was 

 speaking one day to a Californian of London and 

 the glories thereof. He listened politely, but when 

 I had finished he said meaningly: "London is all 

 right, though it ain't Paris, but both of them are 

 — remote." To him, San Francisco was the centre 

 of the solar system : the sun itself. Only last 

 year I happened to meet the same man. His 

 forehead, I noted, was puckered with perplexity ; 

 his clothes were shabby ; liis linen was not im- 

 maculate; he smoked a pipe. After a minute's 



