240 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



house out of the fees received for the winding-up 

 in less than a year of a dead man's estate. Strangers 

 admiring the mansion are always told the story. 

 One man remarked to me that the fellow was not 

 really as smart as some supposed, because he might 

 have taken more. 



Other mean things unduly admired in the West 

 are parades and processions with their dismal acces- 

 sories of blaring bands, fire-crackers, penny whistles, 

 and cheap oratory ; self-assertion and self-advertise- 

 ment, and an inordinate appetite for show. These, 

 of course, are the small defects of great qualities ; 

 but it is doubtful whether they are regarded as 

 defects at all by the Man in the Street. In com- 

 mon with us, too, the children of the West have a 

 " lick-spittle " love of titles. Max O'Eell said that 

 the United States contained sixty-five millions — 

 mostly colonels, but he said nothing about the 

 colonels' wives. Mrs. Doctor Jones, Mrs. Judge 

 Smith, Mrs. Major Kobinson annex their husbands' 

 titles with as little scruple as they assume his crest 

 (if he has one) on their notepaper. There is a story 

 of one eminent jurist who refused peremptorily to 



allow his wife to call herself Mrs. Judge X . 



This gentleman was given to the use, not the abuse, 



of cocktails, despite the protests of Mrs. X , 



who was a pillar of some temperance organisation. 

 It happened one night that his Honour returned 

 home for the first time in his long life in a condi- 

 tion which he described afterwards as "mellow." 

 His wife received him in silence, assisted him to 

 bed, and waited patiently till the next morning. 

 As the judge was finishing his second cup of tea, 



