THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 55 



ones still dormant in their green sheaths. Spring 

 has folded her bright wings; but white and crim- 

 son hollyhocks rise proudly against the silvery blue 

 of peaks yet shining with the — entirely mythical — 

 dews of morn. Cottonwoods fresh with promise of 

 eternal youth frame the picture, already flinging, 

 with refreshing untidiness, their snowy feathers up 

 into the azure sky or down upon my garden paths. 

 What of it? Sordid and Martha-like is that spirit 

 which cumbers itself with such trifles as the dis- 

 orderly habits of summer snows, or fusses about 

 summer heat or winter cold when sheltered from 

 both by a spacious, high-ceilinged adobe house — 

 built, too, not only on one floor but by those who 

 knew how to build. There are adobes and adobes, 

 of course. The bricks are fashioned of mud and 

 straw, run into a mould and then laid out in the sun 

 to dry. Mine is a real old-timey adobe mansion. Let 

 those who worship the little tin god called STYLE 

 roast or freeze in lesser houses of frame or brick, 

 and suffer and be still. If they prefer a row of 

 west windows, too, letting in the roystering wind 

 of Spring and the burning sun of Summer, that al- 

 so is their choice; and few realize, indeed, that with 

 us a southern or eastern exposure is the best, the 

 cool breezes coming from one of those quarters. As 

 a tenderfoot I was once sceptical, but learned my 

 lesson very soon. Some never learn, nor even know 

 from which direction the wild winds or gentle 

 zephyrs blow. 



The well built adobe house, then, is an adobe for 

 the very gods — until maybe the rains come along 



