United States

Watching the young men and maidens crowding to a lecture in the Hearst Amphitheatre at Berkeley, under that glorious Californian sky, I was struck by the sensible, frank intimacy of them all, and envied them the advantages that must be theirs over the English methods of segregation at the same age, which, by creating shyness and destroying familiarity, tends to retard if not destroy the natural understanding which ought to subsist between them and if it did would often make life afterwards so much simpler.

Mention of the beautiful solicitude with which these treasures are surrounded, suggests the reflection that the old country has something to learn from the new in the matter of distinguished custodianship. We have no place of national pilgrimage in England that is so perfect a model as Washington's home at Mount Vernon. It is perhaps through lack of a figure of the Washington type that we have nothing to compare with it; for any parallel one must rather go to Fontainebleau; but certain shrines are ours and none of them discloses quite such pious thoroughness as this.

One of the first peculiarities of Bombay that I noticed and never lost sight of was the kites. The city by day is never without these spies, these sentries. From dawn to dusk the great unresting birds are sailing over it, silent and vigilant. Whenever you look up, there they are, criss-crossing in the sky, swooping and swerving and watching. After a while one begins to be nervous: it is disquieting to be so continually under inspection.

We had met Prohibition first at Honolulu, not a few of the passengers receiving the shock of their lives on learning at the hotel that only "soft drinks" were permitted. Our second reminder of the new regime came as we entered American waters off the Golden Gate and the ship's bar was formally closed. And then, in San Francisco, we found "dry" land indeed. In this connection let me say that in the hotel I made acquaintance with an official of great power who was new to me: the buttoned boy who rejoices in the proud title of Bell Captain.

It would have been pedantic, while in America, to have abstained from an effort at vers libre.

  Their appearance and costume 
  List of the officers 
  Commence our march to Los Angeles 
  Appearance of the country in the vicinity of San Juan 
  Slaughter of beeves 
  Astonishing consumption of beef by the men 

  Mission of San Luis Obispo 
  Gardens 
  Various fruits 
  Farm 
  Cactus tuna 
  Calinche 
  Pumpkins 

  Picturesque situation 
  Fertility of the country 
  Climate 
  Population 
  Society 
  Leave Santa Barbara 
  Rincon 

  Gardens 
  Vineyards 
  Produce of the vine in California 
  General products of the country 
  Reputed personal charms of the females of Los Angeles 
  San Diego