GIFT OF 
 
mo WANTED 
 A 
 BUNGALOW 
 
 LIONEL 
 JOSAPHARE 
 
 NOT RESPONSIBLE for 
 TME&MOWlost, IDEALS 
 CHIPPED on the edges, or 
 HABITS of LAZINKS Acquired 
 
 b book or 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED 
 A BUNGALOW 
 
 Being the Veracious Account of an Author Who 
 
 Went Back to Nature to Get Inspiration 
 
 and Reduce Expenses 
 
 By 
 
 LIONEL JOSAPHARE 
 
 Author of " A Tale of a Town," " The Sovereign in the Street,' 
 " The Lion at the Well," "Turquoise and Iron," Etc. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
Copyright; 1907, by UonelUosaphare 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 To John D. Rockefeller: 
 
 Perhaps you will be surprised to hear from me at 
 this late date, seeing that that which might have been 
 never was, is not, and it might be that wasn't. 
 
 You will doubtless remember how when, as boys, we 
 did not go fishing in the same rustic pool, nor sit side 
 by side sharing the contents of our simple lunch bask- 
 ets. Fond memories of later years which we did not 
 enjoy together on the golf links nor at your summer 
 home, still linger with me, as, I trust, with you. 
 
 I do not dedicate this book to you because you are 
 a rich man. I would not stoop to such an affectation. 
 It is because you are the very richest that I thought of 
 you immediately. 
 
 Perhaps at a future time we may renew the friend- 
 ship that was unreal ; for unreality is the ideal. 
 
 Therefore in token of the many things we have in 
 common, you in the reality and I in the ideal, our many 
 industries, charities and fortunes, yours from oil-wells 
 and mine from ink-wells, permit me to inscribe my- 
 self, with a deep regard for your sources of income, 
 
 Your well wisher, 
 
 L. J. 
 
 239430 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Buying a Studio Farm 7 
 
 Laurel and Alfalfa 14 
 
 The Bombastic Farmer 23 
 
 The Fate of Minotaur 30 
 
 An Interrupted Story 40 
 
 The Effect of a Mosquito on Socialism 49 
 
 Debate Between a Reporter and a Farmer 57 
 
 Have You Ever Felt Like This? 64 
 
 The Tints of Nature , 74 
 
 Evolution of a Useful Article 82 
 
 After All.. . 87 
 
The Man Who Wanted 
 a Bungalow 
 
 BUYING A STUDIO FARM 
 
 Almost every man who knows the meaning of "sky- 
 blue" or likes to look at a squirrel, has had longings 
 for the country. A City life supplies all the luxuries 
 except sweet air and sound livers. Does not the imagi- 
 nation in a dark dining room verily smell the walls of 
 restraint? And do not the far-fancied field-lights and 
 the distant azure burn voluptuously ? 
 
 I had lived in a village when a boy, proud of every 
 wart on my fingers; which proves me a predisposed 
 lover of Nature. In the later muddle of a metropolis, 
 rural fancies were constrained to exercise themselves 
 with Spring poems, sonnets to choice neighborhoods of 
 Creation, and such interpretations, that were not worth 
 one real glance at a buttercup or shoes printed with 
 dew by the blades of grass, The City tills the mind 
 with commercial thoughts. It puts muck on our heart- 
 felt desires, until mushrooms grow in the gloomy in- 
 stincts we had theoried with roses for the sunlight. It 
 makes us cross as the Devil with his tail caught in the 
 door when we have to wait five minutes for dinner. 
 This brings the wish for meadows where there is no 
 waiting, because nothing is expected, and nothing 
 
8 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 comes except many varieties of quietude. You sit by a 
 plashy creek, and a bullfrog that looks as wise as if he 
 had been reading Schopenhauer, causes you more 
 amusement than a vaudeville show on Ellis Street. A 
 beetle that has fallen on its back arouses more excite- 
 ment than a fire or a runaway in the Western Addition. 
 And a woodtick in the armpit makes all Nature seem 
 sublime. 
 
 Often a mild summer breeze would bring me boy- 
 hood fragrances, fairyland impulses; a board walk 
 edged with furze, make me dream of treading the land- 
 scape, joyous as a god who has thrown away his watch 
 and time-table. 
 
 There was another phase. Rents, pleasures and 
 prices were doing a startling aerial performance in my 
 resources. My literary achievements did not attract 
 an income of strong steady pulsation. There would 
 be periods of few receipts from editors, unharmonizing 
 with the systematic business tones of boarding-house 
 keepers. My own landlady had a first-of-the-month 
 scowl that was like the dungeons of despair. In her 
 evil times, it gave me rheumatism and palsy and the 
 gout to approach her. Requesting two days of her 
 indulgence was accompanied by more anguish than a 
 confession of all the rest of my sins. Supplementing 
 this plea with a statement that I had money in the bank 
 made her milk of human kindness turn to limburger 
 cheese and infect me with the blues for an hour. 
 
 The idea came that on an acre of ground I could 
 make one successful month help along a subsequent 
 bad one, as if holding the net for a bad fall of pros- 
 perity. Then, with vegetables bobbing up from the 
 ground at all seasons of the year (I saw them bobbing 
 in gorgeous array) and chickens laying eggs here and 
 there, a cow with its portable, inverted milk fountain, 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 9 
 
 I would never lack homely provender. With a capital 
 of $200, the first payment could be made ; I could farm 
 the mortgaged acre a few hours a day, and, with my 
 pen, cultivate it as an acre of Parnassus during the 
 others. Literary labors would be unharassed by the 
 punctual outlays of the City. Time would not be despot 
 to tax me with bills for the maintenance of an appe- 
 tite. I pictured myself off in the seclusion of this acre, 
 free as Piping Pan, industrious as Vulcan, and yet not 
 so far from San Francisco as to become hayseedy and 
 afraid of modern improvements. 
 
 Not knowing just what town across the bay would 
 offer the most inducements, I scanned the newspaper 
 advertisements and found it to be a case of no good 
 nor better, but all best. I could either take pains to se- 
 lect the choicest of the charming, the balmiest of the 
 best, or make no mistake by trusting to the Pande- 
 monium of chance. Almost all were within a half hour 
 of San Francisco, exquisite opportunities, the whipped 
 cream of a bargain, the most logical of locations. And 
 all desired me to act quickly and secure one of the 
 cheapest little homes yet offered, one that would bear 
 the closest investigation. 
 
 In this mood, I consulted a real estate agent and 
 confided my plans. He thought I was doing the wisest 
 thing in the world. This made my ardor feel as phe- 
 nomenal as the four elements at the outset. For what 
 better start can one have than with doing the wisest 
 thing in the world, especially in the worldwise opinion 
 of a real estate dealer? 
 
 He had the place I required : a four-room bungalow 
 in an acre of ground north of Melrose. Melrose ! I had 
 read of it often in all sizes of type. It had been to me 
 one of those intangible situations alluded to as twelve 
 miles from San Francisco, twenty minutes from Oak- 
 
10 - THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 land, convenient to Haywards; though the temptation 
 of being convenient to Haywards never seemed to me a 
 strong play on the imagination. Having read, during 
 several weeks, of a delightful spot so many miles from 
 somewhere and so many minutes from somewhere else 
 and convenient to otherwheres, I had no hint of it be- 
 ing Melrose. Now was the delightful spot discovered. 
 
 On this acre, I was now told, existed a cow, a bull, 
 and a "veal," six pigs and fifteen chickens. gar- 
 rulity! I had unconscientiously yearned to possess 
 some fauna of this character, but lacked the- courage 
 to affront my town-lubbering friends by collecting 
 them. There they were, and I could not help their be- 
 ing there. Besides, I would not have known how to 
 buy them, had I so desired. They were part of the 
 acre. It would be unnecessary to move into my new 
 quarters leading fifteen chickens, six pigs, a bull, a cow 
 and a veal at the end of so many strings and ropes 
 through Melrose to my farm. I would take this prop- 
 erty, if it pleased me on inspection; and would inspect 
 forthwith. 
 
 Its price was $2000 and would soon be worth twice 
 as much; had cost $3000; but the owner was going 
 east and would accept $200 cash, I to assume the mort- 
 gage. 
 
 On the following day I took the broad-gauge train 
 for Melrose. A bulwark stopped the local from run- 
 ning into the main street. This thoroughfare did not 
 cause any highfaluting throbs of admiration until I 
 caught sight of a canvas sign over a real estate office; 
 to wit: MELROSE, THE CHICAGO OF THE WEST. 
 This encouraged as well as surprised; for there was 
 nothing Chicagolike that I would have discovered by 
 my own sense of sight or smell. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 11 
 
 I followed directions northward past the Boulevard 
 unto an open country. 
 
 The scenery was not romantic, not fascinating as a 
 spread of beauty nor yet engulfed in the artistic dis- 
 mal. It was just Nature common-place. Most of the 
 ground was in stubble. The cottages and shacks here 
 and there were neither beautiful as bright homes nor 
 picturesque ruins. Neither a carpenter nor an art critic 
 would have praised them. Some of the little gable- 
 roofed things were patterned after that school of 
 architecture often seen on the slate of an eight-year-old 
 boy. The paths, edged with dry grass (future streets, 
 I opined) took one over undulating fields the most 
 dazzling aggregation of blank spaces that ever lured 
 the marvelous eye of a grasshopper. These future 
 streets were not straight; but many of Boston's streets, 
 I had heard, were old cow-paths. Why not the same 
 in the Chicago of the West, with its probability of tw6 
 thousand inhabitants ? 
 
 One irregular pass, about eight inches wide, I named 
 Parnassus Avenue as I went along, in honor of the 
 Muses that were to come there. A short way ahead, 
 Parnassus Avenue ran disappointingly into a tent in the 
 back yard of a home-made shack. Still I allowed the 
 name to stand irrevocably. Prudently refraining from 
 styling other thoroughfares until their thoroughness 
 should be an established fact, I followed another 
 way, which eventually went between the legs of a 
 horse in another back yard, and was thence lost to 
 view; so I thought there would be nothing unseemly 
 in calling it Pegasus Alley, in honor of said equine, 
 and with hopes for the alley's future. I then pursued 
 the Appian Way until it ended at an old beer bottle. 
 
 Presently I came to "my" bungalow and acre. 
 
 A slim dame in faded pink flannel was at the gate. 
 
12 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 Such entire, forgetfulness and subterranean dimness 
 were in her eyes that I guessed she had drunk of the 
 waters of Lethe and eaten of asphodel and moly 
 (which, I thereby judged, were not fattening). 
 
 She guided me around without enthusiasm or even 
 human interest, save whatever pathos one could make 
 out of her. The grounds, I saw with my unrural eye, 
 had not been cultivated recently. The cows had not 
 been brushed nor the fences and trees dusted. Some 
 of the newspapers lying about the back door looked 
 as if they had not been washed for months. The 
 principle growth was straw and feathers. In a fenced- 
 off tractlet was the cow family. The only animated 
 part of the bull was his mouth, which worked into all 
 sorts of queer convexities and paraboloids. The cow 
 was a thoughtful, red-plush creature, and seemed to 
 be ruminating upon some new philosophy, which ap- 
 peared to sour her nature, and, I feared, her milk. The 
 calf was pretty well grown up, and if in a circus, I 
 would have thought him a little camel. He did not 
 possess much of his mother's temperament. Occa- 
 sionally he would start off as if imagining himself a 
 butterfly; then would stop and look at the distant 
 hills to distract attention from his incongruous be- 
 havior. But he so resembled a camel that I forgave 
 him for acting like a butterfly. 
 
 We next called on the pigs, which looked at me 
 critically from their wallow. In fact, so fatuously 
 supercilious was the stare of one of the porkers that 
 I hesitated giving him the satisfaction of purchasing 
 him. The chickens, on the contrary, were a cheery 
 lot, and the bungalow nooky with ideals. It was an 
 inspiring home in which to write; and I told the 
 woman so. The statement caused a momentary hu- 
 man light in her eyes. Having assured her I would ar- 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 13 
 
 range with the agent to take the place, I strolled back 
 to Melrose station. 
 
 On the way I noted that the main activity of Mel- 
 rose consisted of five small boys flying kites and a 
 tow-headed girl eating pale bread with brilliant red 
 jelly. Something in my soul tempts me to spell it 
 t-o-e headed, which might have been a slight injus- 
 tice to the size and shape of her innocent pate. 
 
 This soporific environment called for approval, 
 though, and my heart responded with tumultuous ap- 
 plause. 
 
 Back to the City; which now took on the aspect of 
 a distant town to my home in Melrose. I paid over 
 the $200, which included a $100 check I had just re- 
 ceived from an eastern magazine. Less than $100 in 
 cash remained to me. Most of this went for the ex- 
 penses of moving, payment for a couch and cooking 
 utensils and provisions. Other furniture was to be 
 bought as the mood seized me and I could seize the 
 cash. Gradually I would add pictures, ornaments, 
 quaint lamps and articles of interest until Melrose 
 should have one of the show places of Pacific Coast 
 Literature ; or, in other words, a literary studio fit 
 for the " Chicago of the West." 
 
 Ah! I remember my last night in the City. I was 
 ready to steal away early in the morn, from trolley 
 noises, rumbling streets, labyrinthal discomfort. Yet 
 even as I was about to leave them they seemed to 
 manifest strange melodies and colored apparitions of 
 association to hold me. 
 
 I stood late at my bed-room window, peering down 
 a narrow angle of illuminated street; then arranged 
 for a grand voluntary du matin on the alarm clock, 
 and went to sleep. 
 
LAUREL AND ALFALFA. 
 
 There are few things in the world that, for length, 
 breadth, thickness, and Oriental imagery, exceeded 
 my ignorance of agriculture. Frequently having 
 heard the expression that what a certain man did not 
 know about a certain thing would make a pretty big 
 book, it once occurred to me to put the idea into 
 practice. And if so, to make haste; for, after. spend- 
 ing a year on my farm, I knew less about its needs 
 than when I began. Should I delay longer, there is no 
 telling to what seeming impossibilities my void of 
 knowledge would extend, and What I Do Not Know 
 about It make an impractibly large volume. 
 
 In the custody of my estate, I did not intend that 
 this inexperience should embarrass me. A vibration 
 of originality had always caused me to do things in a 
 novel way. I decided to apply this trait to the man- 
 agement of my farm; not only because it might lead 
 to hitherto unheard-of successes, but required less 
 knowledge. It is easier and quicker to be original 
 than experienced. New conditions make new cus- 
 toms. Do we not see elephants eat, glad to get, pop- 
 corn and roasted Virginia peanuts? Yet what astute 
 Zulu or Siamese would have thought of offering rasp- 
 berry popcorn or Virginia peanuts to the captured 
 mammoth of the jungle? Verily, he would have given 
 his Dark Continent laugh or his South-Sea guffaw to 
 the suggestion. No, said I to myself; I will not let 
 ignorance lead me astray to the paths of study. I 
 shall be guided by intuition and, if anything else, 
 logic. This shall be a Bohemian Farm, run on a 
 strictly inspired basis. 
 
 Thus, in planting vegetables, I had a vague, sneak- 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 15 
 
 ing, contemptible idea of some special season being 
 proper for each sort of seed. This I scorned as the 
 gutterals of my baser nature, the taint of commonality 
 that is in us all. My seeds should all be planted con- 
 veniently at the same time, and I would doubtless be 
 eating strawberries when cabbages were the only 
 other fresh fruit on the market. Nature would face- 
 tiously help me out. For, is it not one of Mother Na- 
 ture 's grandest attributes to adapt herself to circum- 
 stances? Of this principle most tillers of the soil are 
 unaware. Did not the Grand Old Lady (Mrs. Nature) 
 evolve statesmen and ring-tailed monkeys from that 
 one same unlikely-looking critter, the missing link? 
 Suppose that, millions of years ago, a pair of missing 
 links should have come into the possession of an ordi- 
 nary, medium-sized Melrose farmer; would he have 
 had the forethought to breed statesmen from them? 
 Or even ring-tailed monkeys? Decidedly no! But 
 some one gave the link a chance. Hence, dear reader, 
 you and I. And hence, I, a story-writer, a producer 
 of fiction, would take Nature out of the rut, and ask 
 her to work at all seasons of the year, rain or shine. 
 
 When the first leaf points should sparkle greenishly 
 from the sod, of course their identity would be un- 
 known to me. A prosaic or imitative mind would 
 think of tabbing the whereabouts of each with a 
 stake in the ground. Not I. My carrot seeds should 
 be sown in the form of letters three feet square, to 
 spell the word CAEEOTS. Each vegetable would 
 spell itself as it emerged from earth. Some letters 
 might appear sooner than others like the incandescent 
 lights of an advertising sign, causing then the soul 
 to speculate, until the whole world be displayed in 
 verdure. This is a fine blending of literature and 
 agriculture. In the rear was a rise in the ground, 
 
16 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 which I sowed with sweet pea in the motto of my 
 domain, PROCRASTINATION. They might, in time, 
 grow luxuriantly, perhaps in ineligible yet fragrant 
 publication of the word, and if "Procrastination" 
 could not be read in the tangled vines, it could be 
 smelled by anyone standing near the blossoms. 
 Around them; I provided a border of cucumbers, in 
 honor of their proverbial coolness. This proverbial 
 coolness would also make good salad. 
 
 Such rural innocence put me in some sympathy with 
 the dog Eowdy, which I had bought in the City. 
 Rowdy was a Gordon setter. He was an old-style 
 Gordon, without modern improvements, in ideas or 
 curve of the tail; wouldn't wear a collar, and had the 
 peculiarity that he would never eat when anybody 
 was looking. Only circumstantial evidence supported 
 the fact that he devoured the miscellany he carried to 
 a secluded spot. Rowdy like myself knew little of 
 country affairs. He had never seen a chicken except 
 in the form of scraps from the table; never beheld a 
 cow save in the shape of a sirloin bone. It was to be 
 pardoned in him, therefore, that when he first went 
 sight-seeing among these bucolic brutes, he did not 
 recognize them, misunderstood the situation, and 
 scrambled after the chickens as if in vengeance of 
 some ancient grudge. The hens on their part were 
 adepts in the art of excitement, and harum-scarumed 
 in such confusion that I thrilled lest they injure in- 
 ternally whatever eggs they were about to lay. When 
 my fingers were finally clutched about Rowdy's neck, 
 he struggled in righteous anger. But I gave him a 
 beating that made him grovel like a serpent. From 
 that moment, one of the great pleasures in Rowdy's 
 life was watching these fowls. , He would enter the 
 enclosure, sit up and gaze at them like an old man 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 17 
 
 near boys at play. Frequently his eye would catch a 
 leghorn, towards whose scratching and strutting his 
 head would incline in studious wonder. When weary 
 of one position, he would trot off to another, take his 
 seat as before and resume the surveillance with all his 
 canine soul. Often of mornings, when I went outside, 
 there would be Eowdy watching the chickens at a dis- 
 tance and proudly airing his tongue. 
 
 On the day of this first poultry lesson, we continued 
 our tour of inspection to the pasturage. I had desired 
 to do something in literature that day, so as to lure 
 the rural Muse from the beginning, yet felt the advisa- 
 bility of an early acquaintance with all my posses- 
 sions. For unto the bull I had increased admiration 
 ever since naming him Minotaur. Though lacking the 
 half human make-up of the monster of Crete, he had 
 all the grand, grisly malice of the Cretan bull; and 
 only opportunity, it seemed, was needed to bring out 
 his profoundly evil nature. To the cow I gave the 
 appellation of lo. Her meditative expression, which 
 I have previously noted, could not but suggest the 
 melancholies of the girl whom Juno had wittily meta- 
 morphosed into a cow. The calf went by the simple 
 name of Veal, though Bones or Slats might have de- 
 scribed him more accurately. Veal was a sad case, 
 with very little inside. He was shaped like a bicycle 
 crate wrapped in a couch cover, but was much flatter 
 on one side than the other, and grew to look more 
 like a camel every day. The saddest part of it was 
 his superabundant and superfluous jollity, acting, he 
 did, as if inhabiting an earthly Paradise. I suspected 
 Veal of not being right in his mind. He was more 
 than absent-minded, lightheaded or humorous. The 
 most charitable word that could be used for him is 
 "eccentric." His susceptibility to* playing tag and 
 
18 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 hide-and-seek with every passing insect, leaf, piece of 
 paper or apparition was not reassuring. He was get- 
 ting too old for it. The time was approaching when 
 he should be valuable for breeding purposes. 
 He certainly was tall enough; taller than his father 
 already. Yet, somehow, I predicted he would never 
 look like a bull. Some constitutional depravity of 
 his left eyelid caused it to droop with a most sala- 
 cious wink ; and his legs were toggle-jointed. Sell 
 him for veal? He .had hardly enough flesh to keep 
 his bones in place, especially on the left side. Be- 
 holding Veal gambol on the green (yellow at that 
 time of the year), I could not but think that with his 
 every move he was gambling with Death, and that 
 the silver cord of his life would be loosened or the 
 golden bowl be broken. Still his backbone held to- 
 gether under the stress, though I sometimes thought 
 it would fall out. The only explanation I could offer 
 was that he was extra fine and strong in the gristle. 
 However, he was distinctly not a literary man's cow. 
 He could never pose as the Monarch of the Herd for 
 my artist friends. 
 
 As soon as he saw Veal, Eowdy lay down to be 
 whipped. He had sinned in thought and was con- 
 science-stricken. In a spirit of kindness I -bade Rowdy 
 to arise and I petted him. Kindness is frequently 
 misinterpreted. I am quite willing to believe that my 
 act was mistaken by Eowdy in good faith. He may 
 have interpreted my caress as meaning that the calf 
 and I were sworn enemies and that he, Eowdy, being 
 my ally, should do his duty. At any rate, he started 
 after Veal without more ado than a limpid snort of 
 joy. 
 
 I have seen the ablest and most grotesque farce- 
 comedians of the day; have witnessed the burlesque 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 19 
 
 work of vaudeville artists who made audiences 
 chuckle and throb down to their very stomachs and 
 back. But never have I witnessed anything as funny 
 as Veal's untutored efforts to escape. Nothing within 
 the scope of human endeavor could approach it. I 
 leaned against the barbed wire and laughed a farm- 
 ful. The laugh dissolved when Minotaur took up the 
 clew and followed his imperiled offspring. Minotaur's 
 start was colossal. For a two-horned, bellowing in- 
 troduction to a catastrophe, it was all that the heart 
 could desire. As a calamity -howler, and the calamity 
 with him, Minotaur was a success. There was a 
 golden cloud of dust with a dark infusion of bull, as 
 he glutted his lust for speed in Rowdy's trail. 
 
 Veal made as straight for the pig-pen as his ill- 
 balanced carcass could go. As an exhibition of pure 
 motion, without any affectation, it was extemporane- 
 ous, but none the less proficient. It w^as artless al- 
 most piquant. The crash with which he struck the 
 fence made me expect to see him snap into half a 
 dozen fragments. There was an explosion of nails 
 and splinters. Through it flew Veal. He did not 
 snap. He was a contortionist. The fence gave way, 
 and Veal was soon struggling amid the swine, with 
 Rowdy chewing him into convulsions. He could 
 scarcely have given more than seventeen fast chews 
 when Minotaur roared into the muddy imbroglio. The 
 next instantaneous tableau was like one of those up- 
 heavals of Nature in which man is powerless to inter- 
 vene. The moment afterwards, Rowdy was sprawl- 
 ingly silhouetted against the pale blue sky and came 
 to earth with a thud of astonishment. He looked 
 around; then took up a position at my side. The 
 rapidity with which Rowdy was learning evidently 
 was going to be a strain on him. With humankind, 
 
20 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 disaster oft follows curiosity; with Rowdy, it was im- 
 petuous disaster first, and subsequent curiosity en- 
 joyed with leisure and calm. 
 
 Most people do not know that swine have fiery tem- 
 pers. They are accredited, the pigs, with a sort of 
 Chinese peacefulness. I did not foresee that they 
 would offer any organized resistance to Minotaur's 
 progress. I thought that, in their vulgar haste to 
 save themselves, they might unintentionally get into 
 his way. Their home was being invaded. Right was 
 on their side. But Minotaur was not in an analytical 
 mood. Three of the porks came out of the riot by 
 the sky route one of them gored beyond repair, and 
 he fatly breathed out his last hold on the terrestrial 
 atmosphere. 
 
 Minotaur's blood now had the furies. Following 
 some red flag of aroused proclivities, he made his re- 
 sounding way to the chicken yard. Through the 
 wire screen fence he screwed, and when inside, made 
 a circle of the arena. Here he had not long to wait 
 for bloody business. Minotaur was scarcely within 
 the fortifications of the feathered tribe when a large, 
 flamboyant, all-colored rooster with flowing tail of 
 Gobelin green and Tyrian purple, flew at him and with 
 one dig of the spur, stripped open the bovine nostril, 
 blood following. 
 
 The victor of the pig-pen stooped and pawed my 
 part of Melrose. 
 
 "Go to it, Hector of the scarlet helm," I yelled 
 to the rooster. 
 
 Hector spread his wings and crouched. He had no 
 thought of retreating. Behind him, the hens darted 
 hither and thither, clucking in terror. On came Mino- 
 taur, with enough momentum to gore a lion. Hector, 
 with comb red-swelling and translucent in the sun- 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 21 
 
 light, met the attack, but was carried backward about 
 four bull-lengths. This distance he had ridden atop 
 the bull's muzzle, scraping and spurring the soft nose, 
 and with bill stabbing his antagonist about the eyes. 
 .He had only to alight at the end of the scrimmage. 
 
 Already the personal animosities among my domes- 
 tic animals had cost me, in casualties one hog, and two 
 fences among the injured. Two of my bravest were 
 now fighting it out for supremacy. At the finish, no 
 doubt, the courage and value of one of them would 
 be depreciated. But the novelty of the conflict made 
 me feel like a grand stand of spectators. Everybody 
 was wild with excitement ; everybody arose from their 
 seats and glared at the fray. Then, as the two com- 
 batants stood opposed, ready for another rush, the 
 whole grand stand, constituted by myself, arose as one 
 man and shouted. 
 
 "Stay with it, feathered Hector with the helmet 
 comb!" 
 
 Rowdy danced around with delight, and barked 
 furiously. The dust smoked between the cock and 
 bull. Clucks, barks, bellows, gutterals, squeals, flut- 
 terings and upsettings of pans more noise than a 
 Chinese funeral showed how the dumb brutes were 
 worked up over this rural sporting event. 
 
 Minotaur was surprised ; and Veal, probably for the 
 first time in his life, looked sedate. Blowing the blood 
 from his nostrils, rolling his eyes and larruping his 
 tail, with lowered head the bull again made for the 
 brilliant cock that in the sunlight shone as if made of 
 many colored metals and shells. Minotaur's idea evi- 
 dently was by added swiftness to horn his nimble ad- 
 versary. But when the two came together again, 
 Hector secured a foothold, gripping his claws into the 
 bull's muzzle, tearing them with trenchant spurs 
 
22 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 dawking the ox-eyes with rapid wing beats. It was 
 useless for the quadruped to continue the engage- 
 ment. He might as well have fought the south wind 
 for all his attack was worth ; in the meanwhile he was 
 getting the worst of it. 
 
 Almost blinded, Minotaur took to flight, and the 
 gaudy victor flew from the aggressor's nose as de- 
 feat plunged back through the wire screen. 
 
 Then Hector gave his college yell, went to a fence 
 and cockodoodled himself the winner. 
 
 During the rest of the day I furthered Pacific Coast 
 Literature by repairing fences and exercised my 
 imagination by wondering what to do with the de- 
 ceased hog. 
 
 Rowdy kept close to me. In his demonstrative way 
 he was plainly saying, Isn't it great to live on a 
 ranch ? 
 
THE BOMBASTIC FARMER. 
 
 One morning I was writing a story for McMunper's 
 Magazine. After penning the first five lines, my 
 thoughts began to fly to the utmost parts of earth and 
 to unknown points of interest elsewhere. I seldom 
 know where my thoughts go. Often they leave me in 
 the morning without saying good-bye or telling when 
 they will return. Frequently they stay out all night. 
 They ramble through enchanted castles in mystic re- 
 gions far from the world, where golden pottery dis- 
 charges inspiring perfumes yet combined with odors 
 that lull the delighted brain. There beautiful ap- 
 paritions smile in the shades and vanish in the sun, 
 while magicians tell poor authors where to find a 
 cavern of gold. 
 
 One by one occurred these fancy flights until 
 there was not enough thought left to write the next 
 word of my story. I couldn't conjure the simplest 
 phrase or think of a suitable preposition. So I went 
 outside for a stroll on my grounds, that the creative 
 mood might return to me. 
 
 Some people do not believe in a creative mood. I 
 know there is one, because I have seen it abscond 
 many a time. Qn this morning, I watched it leaping 
 over the skyline, waving me adieu from the tip of its 
 nose. 
 
 The country is ideal for such impractible tendencies, 
 even removing the sense of self-criticism. It is a 
 pretty place where one can still his conscience by 
 smelling a flower. 
 
 With my farm there was but one thing wrong; that 
 was an old farmer who used to come and lean over my 
 western fence. He was wont to lean his elbows on the 
 
24 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 top rail and observe me. When his all-too-plain in- 
 quisitiveness was satisfied, he would withdraw. Al- 
 most every day he came to fulfill his curiosity; which 
 must have been capacious, for he looked a curiosity 
 altogether. From the hands that fumbled a pipe to 
 the whiskers in his ears, he was curious. Barely over 
 five feet in height and dirty as a potato. It grew on 
 me that in the course of time I would have to become 
 aware of this man's existence. 
 
 Walking up and down in a scientific manner and 
 coming nearer to him at every turn, I at last drew up 
 in surprise within a few feet of him and exclaimed: 
 
 "Good morning !" 
 
 He nodded philosophically, as if the acknowledge- 
 ment of my salute was acquiescing in something that 
 required much wisdom to appreciate. 
 
 We joined in a few other simple views, with the 
 same profundity on his part. Then he asked me : 
 
 "Had much experience at soiling cows?" 
 
 "Did you say spoilin'g ? ' ' I requeried. 
 
 "No; soiling." 
 
 It was a queer word to use if he referred to Mino- 
 taur's nose. But he looked like a New Englander, 
 and I thought this might be the right word in some 
 dialectish hole of New Hampshire. 
 
 "No," I replied mysteriously; "I have not soiled 
 many cows' noses; but I have soiled a few men's 
 noses in much the same way." 
 
 He looked as if his previous opinion of my ignor- 
 ance made astonishment inane; so added: 
 
 "If you're raising for the market, it's better to 
 stall them than soil 'em." 
 
 Thus I learned the term for feeding cows from the 
 soil. 
 
 "Perhaps," I remarked calmly in thankless return 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 25 
 
 for the word, "that's the matter with that calf of 
 mine. ' ' 
 
 "0' course! Feed him on mangel-wurzels. That'll 
 fix him in three weeks." 
 
 There it was again. I suspected mangel-wurzels to 
 be a nonsense word that he had coined for a tender- 
 foot's wonder. So I replied warily: 
 
 "Mangel-wurzels might fatten him on one side 
 only; especially as he seems to have a predisposition 
 that way." 
 
 "I'll come over and take a look at him," said Mc- 
 Cracken, for such, large and intelligent reader, I 
 eventually found to be the name of my neighbor. 
 
 McCracken was an agricultural critic unequalled 
 by any literary purist I had ever known. It was 
 useless to argue with him that mine was a short-story 
 farm, a literary acre, a Parnassian sod, where the 
 vegetables were merely tolerated for their uses. Agri- 
 culture was to him the basic principle of the universe ; 
 and while he granted me privilege to write, regarded 
 literature as a by-product of leisure, akin to whittling 
 sticks. 
 
 McCracken 's first objection to my premises was the 
 soil. This he kicked indignantly, making profane 
 comments at the condition of the sod as it spurted 
 from his shoe-thrusts. 
 
 I protested that I had no hand in the creation of 
 the world, and had not even looked on while Melrose 
 was being made ; so that it's soil was no fault of mine. 
 
 "Irrigation, man, and fertilizers! Can't you see 
 your land needs dressing?" 
 
 "Do you mean to say that I should tamper with 
 the Creator's handiwork and try to rehabilitate my 
 part of the world?" I asked with warmth. 
 
 "Well, this part of the world might have been in- 
 
26 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 tended for California poppies; but you've planted 
 watermelons on it," he retorted in a voice that might 
 have been called dry had he not simultaneously 
 squirted a gob of tobacco juice on the ground. 
 
 "How do you know I planted watermelons?" 
 
 He stooped and with knobby finger prodded from 
 the ground the first sparkling precious green thing 
 that had answered my artistic seed sowing. 
 
 I marveled at his knowledge, but remarked: 
 
 "There's a fine large juicy twenty-five-cent water- 
 melon of the future gone to Gehenna." 
 
 "Hell! No watermelons '11 grow here," he replied 
 with disgust, tearing the leaf-bud apart and throwing 
 it back to earth. "I can see that straight as a split 
 in shingle." 
 
 "Maybe a little watermelon." 
 
 ' i Naw ! Not even a little one ; not even one the size 
 of a cucumber. When those melons 'd be ripe, you 
 couldn't tell them from gooseberries. He spilled some 
 more quadruple extract of chewing tobacco, wiping 
 an Oom Paul beard with his hand, and his hand on 
 the seat of his blue overalls. 
 
 "How would this land do for pineapple growing?" 
 I asked in an offhand way. 
 
 t i What ! Pinnyapples ? Them things they sell on 
 wagons? Well, a man o' your experience might grow 
 wedding cakes first. They 're not worth notice any- 
 how. No respectable farmer would fool with pinny- 
 apples. I had ten years' erperience with two acres of 
 'em down Los Angeles way. But I never saw any 
 pinnyapples. You might try 'em, though. If you're 
 willing to give them nine hours a day for seven or 
 eight years, ye might develop a half yer acre at a cost 
 of about a thousand dollars and sell about nine hun- 
 dred dollars in fruit. And if you got no fruit, you'd 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 27 
 
 know just why; which is a fine thing, too. I know 
 why I didn't get any. So I'm satisfied. It also makes 
 me feel satisfied to leave them alone. " 
 
 " Can't I do it in less than seven years?" 
 
 "Aw, well, ye might plant the suckers and get a 
 crop in about fifteen months; but you woudn't learn 
 as much as using seed." 
 
 "I prefer pineapples to pineapple knowledge," 
 said I. 
 
 "Yes; some people are that carnal-minded they 
 never take any interest in the intellectual side of 
 things. But the location ain't proper here. The loca- 
 tion ought to be somewhere further south. You'd 
 have to fix up the soil; and then the climate wouldn't 
 be right, and you'd have to fix up the climate by 
 building sheds. But this soil around here ain't right; 
 there's no ammonia in it," 
 
 "Ammonia!" 
 
 "Yes; you've got to go to work and have ammonia 
 in yer fertilizer. You get this by using ingredients 
 of sulphate of ammonia or dried blood and bone. And 
 then you've got to go to work and have potash. And 
 then you've got to go to work and have phosphoric 
 acid, which you can get from fish scraps. This gives 
 the flavor to the pinnyapple. I'd have had the finest 
 flavored fruit on the market if they had flowered. 
 But I didn't have the fruit, and consequently they 
 had no flavor." 
 
 "I never knew," said I, "that fish is used to flavor 
 pineapples. ' ' 
 
 "They is, though," he replied, again flavoring my 
 watermelons with tobacco. "They take up every- 
 thing in the soil. If they grew right here, they would 
 taste like turnips unless they were fertilized." 
 
 "Why not experiment with giving them a rasp- 
 
28 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 berry or vanilla flavor?" I rejoined. ""Wouldn't a 
 little absinthe or brandy in the soil be a good thing? 
 What wonderful invention an absinthe pineapple 
 would be!" 
 
 "Too expensive for the market," said McCracken. 
 "But the most expensive thing about pinnyapple 
 growing is the spiky longleaf, which prevents them 
 from growing at all. The leaves come long and curl 
 in at the edges, choking off the new shoots. The plant 
 lingers along for about two years and then dies, un- 
 less tanglefoot has killed it previously. Then they are 
 liable to catch the mealy bugs and the red spiders or 
 the scale, or they get the wilts. Anyway, their chances 
 of life are small. You'd have as much chance with 
 pinnyapples as an oyster in a pig-sty." 
 
 "Do you ever intend to leave this part of the coun- 
 try?" I asked of this soul-destroying pessimist. 
 
 "Yes; I'm going to leave. I figure on getting away 
 from this part of the country in about five years. 
 Then I'm going back to Iowa and grow wheat. Dad 
 is getting pretty old now. He'll hardly last more'n 
 five years. But he's good for that." 
 
 "You're very slow and sure in your calculations." 
 
 "Yes; I always go slow, and I calculate every- 
 thing. It's better 'n going too fast to see what you're 
 doing. I'll never break a record and I'll never break 
 my neck. But when I am on my deathbed, I can lay 
 my hand on my heart and say I knew a whole lot 
 about farming. Wait till I get some mangel-wurzels. 
 I'll make that veal of yours take on weight before 
 morning." 
 
 He went to his barn and returned with a basketful. 
 
 "They look like old-fashioned beets," said I. 
 
 "Some call them beets and some call them mangel- 
 wurzels. Mangel-wurzels is what they are." 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 29 
 
 We repaired to the cow-yard, accompanied by 
 Rowdy. McCracken put down his basket, went over 
 to Veal and thumped him. Veal stood the diagnosis 
 patiently. Eowdy threw himself into the air with 
 hallelujatic transports on seeing Veal thus jabbed. 
 He was yelping as near to the empyrean blue as he 
 could, when Minotaur, with a roar and slap of the 
 tongue, bore down on the basket, scattered the man- 
 gel-wurzels and proceeded quietly to eat one. Mc- 
 Cracken brought one to Veal, while lo, with a soft 
 lowing, put her nose against another. We watched 
 her smell it for about a minute before she took a bite. 
 
 McCracken then went his way, and I to my story. 
 
THE PATE OP MINOTAUR. 
 
 I intended, as soon as having sold a few stories and 
 made the bungalow presentable, to entertain a few 
 friends. The presentableness was not yet complete, 
 when, one afternoon, returning from a walk along the 
 Foothill Boulevard, I found this notice posted on 
 my door. 
 
 WARNING! TAKE HEED!! BEWARE!!! There 
 will be a house-warming on these premises next Sun- 
 day afternoon. All who are found within this bunga- 
 low will be entertained to death. 
 
 By order of the PINK HAND. 
 
 " Wouldn't that warm the cockles of your heart/' 
 said I to Rowdy. 
 
 The cockles of the heart is a cardiac situation that 
 must be highly interesting to all of us. What the 
 cockles are, or how they look, I, in conjunction with 
 many other honest folks, never knew. Nor had I ever 
 heard of their having any other function than that so 
 often referred to. The only act they are known to 
 experience is to be warned. No one has ever spoken 
 of the cockles of the heart as being cooled. Yet they 
 must undergo some cooling process or eventually be- 
 come so hot they would suffer combustion in the fre- 
 quent warmings that a generous world gives them. 
 However, in this case, without knowing just what the 
 anatomical phenomenon consisted of, I felt the cockles 
 of my heart duly going through their well known ob- 
 ligation of being warmed. 
 
 The spritesome Veal had already taken a long 
 course of mangel-wurzels and, incredible as it may 
 seem, gained about twenty-five pounds worth about 
 8 cents a pound when dressed, a gain of about $2, 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 31 
 
 and costing McCracken about $3 in mangel-wurzels. 
 Veal himself seemed astonished at the change, and 
 lost that jaunty air with which he was wont to chase 
 imaginary butterflies. His flanks filled out and his 
 legs grew shapely. Frequently, when I entered the 
 yard, he would gaze at me solemnly, as if to reprove 
 me for the puzzling change that had been wrought in 
 him. His calfhood days were drawing to a close, and 
 McCracken was clamoring for his life. McCracken 
 declared I had given Veal the only practical name on 
 the farm, and described to me how finely he would 
 split the carcass from throat to tail, remove every- 
 thing except the kidneys and hang him up where I 
 could cut off a leg or a few ribs, and he, McCracken, 
 could get back the value of his mangel-wurzels. But 
 I had already trained Veal to give a paw, or a hoof, 
 and hated to think of a piece of him in the oven or a 
 slice of him, cold-roast, on a plate. I knew that a dab 
 of horse-radish over such portion of him would not 
 obliterate the many fond memories and prankish ways 
 of this young bovine. So I pleaded for clemency in 
 Veal's behalf and offered to pay for what wurzels he 
 had eaten. 
 
 On Sunday, shortly after noon, the members of the 
 Pink Hand Band, true to their warning, assailed my 
 bungalow, with many packages, which they unloaded 
 in the kitchen. There were all sorts of useful and use- 
 less viands, glasses, plates and cigar trays; also a few 
 bottles and decanters, to feast amid half of which 
 would have been enough to give one the heart-burn; 
 which is the second stage of warming the cockles of 
 the heart. But the one who could do this with most 
 despatch was not yet arrived, and I was relieved when 
 told she was coming on the next train. 
 
 "Some one must go down to the train and meet 
 
32 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 Clara," was a remark I fished up from a flood of 
 voices. 
 
 "I wonder who that some one is," said I, putting on 
 my hat. 
 
 The local was just bumping into the mid-section of 
 Melrose when I came alongside to assist Clara from 
 the steps. 
 
 "Oh, goody, goody, you haven't grown a beard; 
 and you wrote me you had," she exclaimed. 
 
 "Is that all you notice about me?" 
 
 "And you are not all full of holes where the bull 
 hooked you." 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 "And you don't carry samples of wild oats in your 
 hair." 
 
 "Those," I reminded her, "are things that are not. 
 What is that which is?" 
 
 "Well, what?" 
 
 "Don't you observe my fine coat of tan?" 
 
 "You had that in the City, and vest and trousers 
 too." 
 
 "It seems to be," said I, "that you are unduly 
 frivilous at beholding the fine hue of glowing health 
 with which Nature has tinted my ardent young 
 cheeks and made me illustrate the heritage of 
 strength which is mine." 
 
 "Oh, I thought you looked a trifle pale." 
 
 "Though you are not observant, you might at least 
 be generous," I rejoined. "Did I come to the country 
 to look pale? Do I repair fences, climb to the roof 
 of the bungalow to stop up leaks, crawl down peril- 
 ously to prohibit a fight among my domestic animals, 
 breathe all the fresh air I can, and feed on the nurtri- 
 tious products of the soil, merely to look pale ? , Nay, 
 not so." 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 33 
 
 Clara had a temperament in which I interested my- 
 self at first to see if she could be induced to praise 
 anything. Her approbation was as difficult to raise as 
 pineapples in snow. After studying her for about a 
 year, I made a fad of remembering her innocent aloof- 
 ness, and later found it difficult to give up the study. 
 
 She had a fondness for all manners of danger, al- 
 ways insisting that dangers are but imaginary. When 
 brought face to face with her peril, after the most 
 detailed warnings from everybody, she would mani- 
 fest paroxysmal surprise at the outcome and claim to 
 have been deluded by something or other. 
 
 I remember the time she would not believe that 
 slow and cautious practice is necessary before making 
 a headlong dash on roller skates. I recall the occasion 
 when she had no faith in the principle that rocking a 
 boat will upset it. I recollect when she confidently 
 made lunches of such odds and ends as pink and 
 green salads, rainbow ice-cream, sparkling lemonade, 
 gaudy candies and ornate cakes. Her way out of all 
 these difficulties was the shortest and quickest; and 
 she was a spectacular if not an efficient sprinter. 
 
 When we arrived at the farm, Clara could not be 
 induced to go around to the front gate, but must 
 short-cut it through the cow-field. 
 
 " Bulls never hook unless you're afraid of them/' 
 she asserted. 
 
 At that moment, Minotaur turned and saw us. 
 
 "Will he hook?" whispered Clara. 
 
 "Whatever a bull ever did, Minotaur will do," I 
 attested. 
 
 "If he hooks, take him by the horns," she advised. 
 "Everybody knows that if you take a bull by the 
 horns he is conquered." 
 
 "That," said I, "is for a man with plenty of time. 
 
34 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 I wouldn't care to hold a bull by the horns all after- 
 noon while his temper is cooling." 
 
 Minotaur took several steps towards us. 
 
 He had hardly done so, when, Clara, with a victim- 
 ized shriek, fled, accelerating her departure with long 
 repititions of her strating cry. It brought the crowd 
 of house-warmers to the rear of the bungalow. 
 
 "Here, you bull," said I, assuming a commanding 
 tone; "lie down!" 
 
 Minotaur never did have the proper respect for 
 me. He now began to bellow with the seeming in- 
 tention of frightening me off the field. I recollected 
 his tossing of the pigs and Eowdy, and now was he 
 desirous of substantiating his claim to the champion- 
 ship of the farm by defeating me. But I would not 
 run from a brute that had had to scuttle from the as- 
 sault of a barnyard rooster. Besides, the look in his 
 eye was so malignant that I felt, should I run, I would 
 lose all mastery over him and the fun of owning him 
 be lost forever. 
 
 All this I thought in a few seconds; upon which, 
 Minotaur charged at me with genuine fervor. I 
 jumped aside, but drew my revolver in anticipation of 
 his closer aim. He was a fairly valuable bull, and, at 
 another time, I might have felt constrained to save the 
 life of my property by running away with my own. 
 But at that moment, something almost human and 
 Minotaurish in his rolling eye and ponderous roar, 
 angered me.- It was the climax of the struggle be- 
 tween the human and the brute creation. And all 
 that went through my mind in another second. 
 
 On he came. I gave him a last chance. 
 
 "Whscrowk!" I hollered, meaning that he should 
 back down. 
 
 I would use gentleness with him to the last. I in- 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 35 
 
 tended to convey to him that it was his duty as a 
 brute to desist in his attack. I kept my finger on the 
 trigger. If I could get the idea gently into his head 
 very well; if not, I would rid him of his own pesti- 
 ferous ideas by blowing out his whole brainful. 
 Either way suited me as I dodged from his mutinous 
 onslaught. 
 
 He came again, and I fired. The ball splashed be- 
 tween his eyes. 
 
 Minotaur tumbled to the sod. 
 
 I looked for Clara. She had just cleared the fence 
 and was still running and screaming. Before I took 
 the hurdle, she had already passed the beer bottle at 
 the head of Appian Way and was making towards 
 Pegasus Alley, which still extended to the legs of the 
 same horse in the same back yard. 
 
 I hurried after the girl and roared for her to stop; 
 but with my every roar, she increased her speed and 
 shriek. Finally I caught up, lay my hand on her 
 shoulder and brought her to a standstill. She gave 
 a yell and fell into my arms. 
 
 " What's the matter?" I asked hoarsely. "Why 
 didn't you stop when I called you?" 
 
 "I thought you were the bull," whispered Clara. 
 
 "Yonder lies the bull." 
 
 "He looks dead." 
 
 "I had to kill him." 
 
 "With a blow of your fist?" She beheld me proudly. 
 
 "No; I had to shoot him." 
 
 "Oh, what a shame! He never hurt anybody. 
 Maybe he was only trying to fool us." 
 
 "One can't meditate upon those things when only 
 a fraction of a second is given him. ' ' 
 
 "What a red shame!" resounded from the red 
 
36 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 mouths of all my guests on our return. "Why didn't 
 you run away?" 
 
 "It is useless to expostulate now," I replied. "The 
 bull is dead; long live the bull." And I patted Veal 
 on the head Minotaur II, who was, with lo, gloating 
 over the deceased sire. I continued: "He would have 
 killed somebody, perhaps a talented person, sooner 
 or later. I had long made up my mind to have that 
 bull for dinner." 
 
 "You can't eat a bull," interposed Clara. 
 
 "You can't, eh? Well, just watch me. I'll eat that 
 bull if I have to crunch each mouthful fifty-seven 
 times. Or, if I cannot eat him, McCracken can. You 
 don't know neighbor McCracken. He'll be able to 
 eat that bull if it can be eaten at all. McCracken can 
 do anything about a farm. If he doesn't eat every 
 decent part of Minotaur, I'll have lost faith in scien- 
 tific agriculture. Let it come ta the worst, and I'll 
 grow pineapples and use Minotaur for fertilizer. 
 Blood and bon^, you know (no; of course you don't 
 know; you are ignorant of agricultural methods) 
 but they make ammonia, which flavors the pineapples." 
 
 "I think he is right," said Clara, firmly. 
 
 Several entered the kitchen to prepare the banquet. 
 I showed others around the establishment. 
 
 "These animals, to your right," I said, "are pigs, 
 sometimes called hogs. In agricultural communities, 
 such as you now behold, they are termed swine. 
 From swine, we get many valuable articles, such as 
 pork, lard, bacon, ham and eggs, pig's feet, etc. 
 Sausage is one of the largest industries in which 
 swine are interested. The sows' ears are used largely 
 in the manufacture of silk purses. These brutes are 
 stubborn and have great will power. Out of their 
 will power, pig-iron is made. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 37 
 
 "On your left is the chicken park. I have made a 
 special study of fowls and found them worthy of 
 pursuit. In my young days, restaurant proprietors 
 used to inform me that the only edible parts of the 
 chicken are the gizzard and leg. This is an exploded 
 theory.' 7 
 
 Suddenly a young woman came running out of the 
 house crying "The bungalow's on fire!" 
 
 How quickly a few words can make one feel differ- 
 ent and change his sportive tongue. 
 
 In a trice we all seemed whipped by fiends. Im- 
 mediately we were in the kitchen, wiiere the garbage 
 pail full of wrapping paper was ablaze. The table- 
 cloth was flaming. A heap of boxes in which the vis- 
 itors had brought dainties were mixed in the tiny 
 conflagration. One of the men had endeavored to use 
 his coat to extinguish the tablecloth, and both were 
 burning. (Not the man and the tablecloth, but the 
 tablecloth and coat.) Just as I entered, a lamp was 
 knocked over and its kerosene setting afire the wall 
 below the window. 
 
 Four men were trying to draw water with one 
 bucket from the sink faucet. I made a dash to get 
 the garden hose, and was speeding outside the door- 
 way when Rowdy got between my legs, twisted me. 
 around and I fell to the floor of the veranda. Rowdy 
 gave a yelp and went. As two sweet-cheeked young 
 women helped me up, I heard one of then say : 
 
 "Poor fellow!" 
 
 To which the other responded: "And he was so 
 proud of his bungalow, too ! ' ' 
 
 Turning to look, I saw the whole westward wall of 
 the kitchen in the upward flow of the yellow, liquid- 
 like flames. 
 
 I sped to the barn, where I found the hose had beer 
 
38 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 screwed so long to the faucet that six mighty and 
 superhuman efforts were required to release it. Hur- 
 rying back with the coil, I was confronted with a sort 
 of darkness in the kitchen. 
 
 "What happened to the fire?" I cried. 
 
 They all pointed to McCracken. He held a long red 
 tin tube, whose contents he had cast at the incipient 
 calamity. It was a patent fire extinguisher. 
 
 Good old McCracken! Knew everything. Did 
 everything. I could see at once that he was the kind 
 of a man always at hand in an emergency. A frowsy, 
 ugly, old bearded Alexander that went through life 
 cutting the Gordian knots of his friends. 
 
 "It came near being another and unexpected sort 
 of house-warming," said Clara. "I didn't know 
 those matches jump so when you light them. Ill 
 never light one of that brand again." 
 
 "It looked like curtains for the bungalow," was the 
 remark of a poet standing near me. 
 
 "If the bungalow had been burned to the ground, 
 it would not have needed curtains," said I. 
 
 But we house-warmed during the rest of the after- 
 noon, with the assistance of McCracken, who knew as 
 much about the subject as any of us. At night we 
 marched over with lanterns and warmed his house. 
 Three times we made him stand on a chair and re- 
 late how he had put out the fire. He had started to 
 tell it for the fourth time when we coursed back to 
 the cow-yard and held a war-dance with Japanese 
 lanterns around the body of Minotaur I, with elabor- 
 ate Ceremonies consigning his corporal remains to 
 McCracken and his soul to the Elysian Fields. 
 
 In resumption, I may state that house-warming is 
 an excellent mental stimulus and leaves many tender 
 memories. But for the first day or two afterwards, 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 39 
 
 such aspects are not noticeable; they do not at once 
 take definite form. This interval is overcast with 
 mysterious lassitude. There is also a dull, unaccount- 
 able repentance, as if for deeds committed in a former 
 existence. We go through the house, gazing out the 
 windows, taking to couches, sprawling on chairs, and 
 ever and anon engulfing glassfuls of water with such 
 greed that considerable of the liquid trickles down the 
 neck and makes life appear in a bad light. We rest 
 our head on our cool hand until the hand becomes hot 
 too, and then we try another position. There seems 
 to be no place in the world adequate for the accom- 
 modation of this very same head. We eat because we 
 think the world needs us yet and it would only be 
 selfishness on our part not to take sustenance, and use 
 all possible means to retain it. The faces of friends, 
 in the distorted imagination, are ugly, as we wonder 
 what they will say when they see us again. 
 
 House-warming is not a necessary adjunct to the 
 breeding of cows and the raising of vegetables. Yet, 
 on the whole, it improves the mind and gives a liter- 
 ary touch to the commonplace habit of passing the 
 bread. 
 
AN INTERRUPTED STORY 
 
 Gilsey was a reporter. He and I had once worked, 
 smoked and cursed our Stygian luck on the same 
 newspaper. 
 
 Having lost his job, through a misunderstanding 
 (the misunderstanding was this: Gilsey 's City Editor 
 had detailed him on a political story; the City Edit- 
 or's idea was that Gilsey should cover the story with 
 all decent expedition; but Gilsey, under a misappre- 
 hension and feeling that all political matters drag 
 horribly, proceeded to while away what he considered 
 surplus time at a nearby whiskey counter, where, in the 
 course of a few hours, he forgot whither he had been 
 sent) anyway, having lost his job, Gilsey wrote me, 
 begging all possible pardons, but pointing out what a 
 felicitous deed I would perform by returning him the 
 fifty cents I had borrowed a year before, and, should 
 I feel so hilarious as to top the repayment with an 
 extra half dollar, he thought he would be able to play 
 twiddle twaddle with starvation for a few days. As 
 with most reporters, emergencies usually trapped him 
 without enough money to pay the funeral expenses 
 of a dead certainty; understand? At such times, he 
 would have about thirty-five cents. 
 
 So I invited Gilsey to be fresh-aired and country- 
 fed for a week or two at Procrastination Farm, but 
 suggested to him, on arrival, that he play not too 
 strongly on the motto as it hung in my studio. As for 
 the word, "Procrastination," planted in sweet peas, 
 the seeds, presumably having taken the motto to 
 themselves, had not yet appeared. 
 
 He came on a Wednesday afternoon. I remember 
 it was Wednesday because Gilsey burlesqued the man- 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 41 
 
 ners of his former co-scribes perhaps at that very 
 moment of payday entering the local room with their 
 weekly envelopes. 
 
 We were filling the room full of tobacco smoke and 
 dreams. I had a pipe and gave Gilsey a cigar whose 
 band was as glorious as a chmpionship belt. At ef- 
 fulgent ease, I sat and smiled over the twelve-hued 
 Smyrna carpet, the dark ponderous furniture, the 
 glimmering portiers, statues white and bronze, and 
 many other objects common in uncommon places, and 
 which Fancy said would be in my rooms as soon as I 
 should realize on the tragedy in blank verse which I 
 had been writing an hour a day. I would have liked 
 to devote more time to it, but could not afford to do 
 so. Art pleaded, but Necessity would not allow more. 
 Necessity is the stepmother of literary invention. 
 
 Gilsey worked the cigar muscles of his face and 
 poured out another glassful. I soon saw that Gil- 
 sey 's chief claim to my friendship, as on previous oc- 
 casions in the City, would consist of drinking my wine 
 and calling me a fool. Sometimes I had no wine, and 
 sometimes I acted quite sensibly ; he stuck to me in 
 either case, though the shock (especially in the 
 former) was severe. But now and then I wondered, 
 should I give up wine and folly at the same time, what 
 would become of Gilsey. In defense of myself, I must 
 say that every man who had an established home and 
 income, and who notwithstanding entertained one 
 particle of discontent or found a word of fault against 
 the universe, Gilsey despised as a fool of the lowest 
 type. 
 
 Setting down his glass, the ex-reporter drawled : 
 "Put that tragedy at the bottom of an old trunk and 
 go to work on a hot melodrama, with fire-engines and 
 
42 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 explosions and bridges and horse races and prison 
 cells. 7 ' 
 
 "It would be playing thunder and buttermilk with 
 my reputation/' I replied. 
 
 "My dear friend," he rejoined, "the larger part of 
 your fame, especially as to poetry, rests with me ; and, 
 as I promise you not to be a fickle public, you may 
 confidently go ahead on something profitable. In the 
 meanwhile I shall not forget your genius." 
 
 The word "profitable" is alluring even when com- 
 ing from the lips of a hartless critic. 
 
 "Gilsey, your influence comes like a green cater- 
 pillar on a pink rose. Yet I may write one melo- 
 drama. ' ' 
 
 He said: "Blank verse is well and good for college 
 graduations, when everybody is feeling sad and dig- 
 nified ; but it is not an institution where a man takes 
 his lady until it is time for a 11 o 'clock supper. ' ' 
 
 "I did not know that boon to be the big squash in 
 drama," said I, extra dryly. 
 
 "Then melodrama is real life," he pursued. 
 
 "All except the happy ending," mused I. 
 
 "Happy endings are the life of the soul," was his 
 view of it. 
 
 In a little while I lit another pipeful and queried, 
 "What do you think of this for a plot?" 
 
 "Let's hear it; but don't make it too fancy." 
 
 Heedless of this traverse, I began: 
 
 "It happened in California in a one-story, gable- 
 roofed village between a railroad track and a hay- 
 press." 
 
 "Good!" exclaimed Gilsey, with more enthusiasm 
 than I had assessed him for. 
 
 "The first scene opens in a wheat field. The hero- 
 ine enters with two friends. One of them is Spanish 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 43 
 
 at a glance; the other, French at a wink; while the 
 heroine is, of course, everything that is desirable, as 
 both the hero and the villiam well know. She is a 
 clever girl, a graduate of the Stanford University, 
 and sings in a sweet Palo alto." 
 
 "Here, now," muttered Gilsey. "I came from 
 there." 
 
 "The hero enters, winks at Babette, takes in Car- 
 mencita at a glance and, observing Louise well, no 
 one could look at Louise without feeling he had never 
 loved before." 
 
 "Great!" moaned Gilsey. 
 
 "You see, she is so beautiful that they have called 
 her the 'Lady of the West/ and such is the name of 
 the melodrama. Her hair is gold-hued as the nuggets 
 that come from the mines. She is essentially a West- 
 ern Girl. In the light of midday, miles of yellow 
 wheat reflect the light of the sun upon her widely- 
 admired cheek. The red-yellow poppies throw their 
 humbler glow upon her feet. From top to bottom the 
 girl stands in the manifold gleams of the Golden 
 State. The wheat, the poppies, the gold and the sun 
 not only bend their yellow illumination against her, 
 but even penetrate her soul and make her inwardly 
 a child of the West. Her eyes and her skies are blue. ' ' 
 
 "Fine!" roared Gilsey, sinking lower in his chair 
 and spilling cigar ashes in his wine. That's worth 
 $10,000 in four acts." 
 
 His words made me jubilate. Fancy put up its 
 radiant umbrella to ward off the shower of gold. A 
 clairvoyant thrill from heart or solar plexus played 
 in premonition of profits. It was as if the Tenth 
 Muse (the tutelary goddess of Western Literature) 
 was about to do a buck-and-wing incantation for my 
 prosperity. 
 
44 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 What is so cheering as the praise of a pessimist, 
 even though he be intoxicated. Here was Gilsey, 
 whom I was beginning to nickname mentally as the 
 Plum-gouger of Melrose, thumping me on to success. 
 The wreath of drama was just being felt comfortably 
 set on my brow, when, a moment later, its green 
 laurel curled and rotted and fell. 
 
 McCracken entered suddenly. 
 
 "Is this the editor of the Melrose Weekly Pumpkin 
 News?" asked Gilsey, in a discontented rumble. 
 
 "Say, neighbor," began McCracken, "I think 
 there's hog cholera in your sty." 
 
 "Hog cholera!" I exclaimed as the panorama of 
 wealth collapsed temporarily. 
 
 "What makes you think it is hog cholera?" asked 
 Gilsey, with the charming intimacy and inquiring 
 mind of a reporter. 
 
 "Well, it might be swine plague, but I think it is 
 hog cholera," answered McCracken. 
 
 Gilsey turned to me, grumbling: "I don't see what 
 difference that should make to you. Plague on the 
 pigs and their hog cholera. Go on with the story. As 
 for me, whether it is hog cholera or swine plague 
 doesn't matter a flip I'm proud to say. 
 
 I questioned the harbinger of evil: "How do you 
 distinguish between the hog cholera and the swine 
 plague?" 
 
 "It's this way: In some circumstances they're about 
 as much alike as hogs and swine. It's hard to, tell un- 
 til after they're dead." 
 
 "Good!" chuckled Gilsey. "Wait until they are 
 dead and then hold a post mortem examination. Be 
 scientific. ' ' 
 
 "What are the symptoms?" I asked McCracken. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 45 
 
 "Yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the hogs had 
 lost their appetite." 
 
 Gilsey sat up in his chair. After staring at me in 
 wild wonder, he delivered himself of the following: 
 
 i ' Great peppermints ! What sensible man, what 
 gentleman of culture and refinement would be men- 
 tally disturbed by the fact that a pig had lost its ap- 
 petite? Perhaps it's the dawn of their better natures; 
 perhaps they have overloaded their seventh stomachs. 
 For my part I should consider it a cause of rejoic- 
 ing." 
 
 "Their breathing is out of order; all your hogs are 
 coughing," added the farmer. 
 
 "Maybe it is the croup," Gilsey suggested. "Or 
 the whooping cough. If it's the whooping cough 
 by heck! There's a rush of luck to my bazoo, and 111 
 be lassooed for a lallapaloosa if I don't photograph 
 them and get up a Sunday story. A pig with the 
 whooping cough ! Great scoops ! Funniest thing ever, 
 or I'm dreaming. I'll make $25 out of this. A whoop- 
 ing-cough scoop! A whooping hog! Say, I'm glad 
 you got this farm; I'll get many a story out of it." 
 
 "Pigs don't have whooping cough," McCracken 
 advised. Vivid with love of the soil, he faced the re- 
 porter like an earth god blasting a mortal. 
 
 The reporter refused to feel blasted. He addressed 
 the other 
 
 "Friend, you are not in sympathy with journalism. 
 I saw at once that you are not a newspaperman, 
 though I at first suspected you of being a rural editor, 
 merely on account of your presence here. It is not 
 necessary for these interesting creatures to have the 
 whooping cough from a medical, but from a Sunday 
 Supplement standpoint. All that they must do is to 
 assume the positions and perform the duties and an- 
 
46 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 tics of whooping. Think of it!" turning to me 
 "How many are there? Five? Fiv6 pigs stretching 
 their damned throats to heaven, opening their Bac- 
 chanalian snouts and whooping it up in innocent and 
 diabolical consternation! Suffering porkchops! Im- 
 agine their clumsy efforts interpreting the internal 
 confusion as exemplified in the novel basso profundo 
 effects of their voices. Snuffle, snuffle, grunt, grovel- 
 whoop ! What a picture ! Is there anything else 
 worthy of note?" he again questioned McCracken. 
 
 That disgusted person gave his reply to me: 
 "They're acting dull and stupid." 
 
 Gilsey bounded from his chair. "Ha! This is too 
 devilish good! Beautiful, beautiful! The pigs are 
 dull and stupid. Say, what kind of hogs are they, 
 anyway, in their normal condition? With what intel- 
 lectual diversions do they usually pass their time? 
 Oh! I had forgot. They are a literary man's pigs. I 
 suppose you read poems to them every morning, treat 
 them to Greek orations in the afternoon and play 
 moonlight sonatas near the sty at night. But now 
 their hamfat spirits are back-sliding. Now, alas, they 
 are dull and stupid." And Gilsey put his elbow on 
 the mantel, to laugh it out with himself. 
 
 However, I had to forget "The Lady of the West," 
 and we set out for the sty. Our feet, eloquent with 
 apprehension, spoke their sorrowful way on the 
 ground, as our tongues trod the airs of discussion, with 
 a cure for hog cholera the destination of our hopes. 
 My neighbor and I were, of course, grave as all scien- 
 tists are, while Gilsey, my wine-fellow of a few min- 
 utes ago, trailed along in lugubrious jollification, ad- 
 vising spirits of ammonia and soothing syrup for the 
 victims' physical palliation, and sachet powders for 
 their subtler senses. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 47 
 
 After inspecting the patients, we went to town and 
 bought a mixture. It was ineffective. 
 
 Within a few days, in spite of the sulphur, sodiums 
 and charcoal fed to the sufferers on McCracken's pre- 
 scribing, four of the five went to the Valley of Shad- 
 ows. One shoat survived the Pandemonium. The 
 corpses were cremated in their sty. We piled logs 
 over them and set fire to the whole structure. 
 
 Pig-raising as an industry was thus eliminated from 
 my day's routine. It was probably for the best, as 
 they were not inspiring. 
 
 The convalescent shoat we gave a carbolic acid bath 
 and every comfort. He never became fatty and pig- 
 like ; his form was stunted ; his mind apparently re- 
 miniscent. I built a kennel for his lodging, and he 
 boarded on the European plan where he happened to 
 be, in and about the farm. He liked wheat and corn 
 mainly. On occasions I nourished him with patent 
 breakfast foods, daintied him with fancy crackers and 
 predigested foods. He became quite a pet. Some- 
 times, to sustain his interest in life, I gave him por- 
 tions from the table, which he accepted if not with 
 good manners at least with good will. Sometimes a 
 bowl of wine or beer or whiskey mash went his way; 
 all in all he was the most stylishly kept pig I knew of. 
 Rambling about the grounds at will, subject only to 
 Rowdy's admonishing bark, Pig soon learned that the 
 right to muzzle over foliage and prospect for juicy 
 roots was not his. He was a favorite with visitors, 
 especially those who were the least hoglike I mean 
 the ladies, who took his grunt as a sign of the most 
 delicious intelligence. 
 
 Ungainly quadruped, survivor- of a fivefold belly- 
 ache that exploded the ideals and reals of thy noble 
 kinspigs, the world offers its temporary standpoint to 
 
48 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 thy lonely feet. leaflard pig! like us all in the 
 winds of eternity, more light as a leaf than important 
 as lard. Tread softly the dangerous earth. For thy 
 life is the heirloom of all the swine that wallowed in 
 these muse-haunted environs. Long life and joyful 
 grunts to thee! And when the time comes that thou 
 must wobble into oblivion, and shouldst thou come to 
 be a pig in another world, tell thy comrades that anti- 
 mony sulphide is not an infallible remedy for hog 
 cholera, or swine plague, and to put all- their hopes in 
 ^metempsychosis, eternal change and the great mystery. 
 
THE EFFECT OF A MOSQUITO ON SOCIALISM. 
 
 I once thought that farming consisted mostly of be- 
 ing sturdy, honest and gathering in the crops while 
 travelers in the overland trains waved their handker- 
 chiefs from the car windows. Waiting for rain also 
 had something to do with it. Later, I found that a 
 successful crop-gatherer must be a microbe-hunter, a 
 bug-student, an architect, a chemist, a veterinary sur- 
 geon, a geologist and what is called a good loser. 
 After some trials, I was able to fulfill the latter re- 
 quirement superbly. 
 
 Still, the way I destroyed precendents and results 
 at the same time was not all my own fault. In the 
 first place I wish to say that there is something wrong 
 with the earth on which we live ; not as a world, but as 
 mere earth, sod, soil. For instance, certain edible roots 
 having been planted in the form of the word, CAR- 
 HOTS, why should only CAR have emerged from the 
 ground? And what had become of ROTS? Had the 
 mischief been entirely mine, nothing at all should have 
 grown from the seeds, as all had the same benefits at 
 the start. But there was CAR, and ROTS unevidenced 
 save by insinuation. Of CABBAGES, only part of a 
 syllable, BA arose to view. And of SUNFLOWERS, 
 only OW. It was the science of McCracken, who 
 knew them at sight, that enabled me to decipher the 
 bewitched words. And right here I'll say a good 
 word for potatoes. I had at Procrastination Farm the 
 finest potatoes in the world. That was one consola- 
 tion. McCracken planted them, accidently in the 
 right place, and nothing ever harmed them. 
 
 My chickens were a dare-devil herd, forever squab- 
 bling among themselves. Did one of them find a worm*, 
 
50 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 a riot immediately ensued, and for a while it was like 
 flying hatpins, although I ^ave them all they could 
 gorge of wheat, corn, table scraps, crushed oyster 
 shells AND mangel-wurzels. Besides, they had an 
 alfalfa playground to themselves. Nevertheless, one 
 little worm of discord, and I could hear the clatter of 
 conflict from my writing table ; then would have to 
 lay off work and separate the combatants. No won- 
 der the rooster had whipped a bull; he was head of a 
 fighting tribe. 
 
 There was another food to which these hens were 
 very much attached, and that was newly-laid eggs. I 
 had never heard of chickens eating raw eggs. I fancied 
 they produced these nutritious objects for man's use 
 and the propagation of their own species. But oft at 
 dewy eve, going out to collect the oviform deposit of 
 this well-fed pampered poultry, I would find one- 
 twelfth of a dozen intact and a mess of empty shells. 
 At first I did not suspect the blackguards. I inferred 
 that a gopher or other foul varmint had sneaked into 
 the nests. And I resolved, should he be arrested and 
 convicted, there would be a public execution in pres- 
 ence of all the live stock. But once upon a time I lay 
 for the intruder and beheld my own hens guzzling, the 
 yolks and eating part of the shells in an attempt to 
 destroy the evidence of crime. 
 
 "McCracken," said I one day, "I hate to be tapping 
 the fountain-head of your wisdom so often; but tell 
 me, is it the duty of a farmer to watch his hens all 
 day and at the dramatic moment snatch the egg from 
 their greedy mawsf Must I bring my work into the 
 chicken palace and wait for the triumphant cluck that 
 heralds another egg has seen the light of day?" 
 
 "The egg-eating habit in chickens," said he, "is a 
 pernicious one and hard to break." 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 51 
 
 "All pernicious habits are/' 
 
 "The whole trouble lies in the fact that your nests 
 were built wrong in the first place. You see, some hens 
 fight for the possession of a nest, an egg is broken in 
 the skirmish ; then they experiment with the inside and 
 find it good to eat." 
 
 "Ah, I see! There has always been considerable ill 
 feeling in that flock. " 
 
 We went to the scene of infamy. Two fowls were in 
 the nests. Along came a Mother Grundy sort of a leg- 
 horn and, instead of entering one of the unoccupied 
 boxes, went right for the one in which a black hen was 
 squatting in egg-laying bliss. There was a scuffle, and 
 shortly afterwards, the leghorn was mistress of the 
 straw. The black one, trembling and clucking with 
 rage, flew into a box where sat another layer. A 
 short, snappy discussion followed; then a fracas, and 
 the intruder was cast out. 
 
 "An egg there, and you'd a' lost it," muttered Mc- 
 Cracken. 
 
 "What shall I do?" I hoped he would tell me to do 
 havoc and carnage, or something that could be done 
 with a hatchet. 
 
 "Open up the boxes, put them further apart, and if 
 there must be fighting, give them plenty of room. 
 Also give them eggshells to eat, and maybe in time 
 they'll break off their habit." 
 
 "Oh, I'll give them all the eggshells they can use." 
 
 In a short time, after nabbing the chief offender, and 
 serving her up in the form of a stew, some of which I 
 gave to Rowdy and Pig, matters became so prosperous 
 in the hennery that I was able to trade eggs for coffee 
 at the Melrose grocery store. This was my first re- 
 splendent success as a producer. 
 
 I may now record what amounted almost to a night- 
 
52 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 mare at Procrastination Farm. It was the very deli- 
 rium tremens of agriculture ; to wit : bugs. In wander- 
 ing about the grounds one day, I found a black beetle 
 and gave it to the rooster as a peace offering. Not 
 long after that, beetles were found ambushed under 
 every stone and clump of earth. Other insects appeared 
 in large forces. I think that my acre in Melrose was 
 the most insecty place on the face of the globe. Often 
 it was gorgeous with the hues of their wings. There 
 were ants that marched in caravan. Now and then the 
 air was filled with the gentle thunder of bees. Butter- 
 flies, grasshoppers, ladybugs my plants were jeweled 
 with them. Horseflies were numerous, though I kept 
 no horse. 
 
 The cucumber and melon vines became afflicted with 
 yellow spots and curlycues, thus teaching me the game 
 of downy mildew and leafblight. Dodder curled all 
 over the alfalfa. 
 
 The only, pure, unsullied part of my farm, outside 
 of McCracken's potatoes, was the sky. And this, too, 
 taking into consideration that I never took the slight- 
 est care of it. I never had to hoe or rake the sky; 
 never fertilized, never irigated it. And yet the sky 
 over my farm was as beautiful an azure as over any 
 spot in Melrose. Of course, whenever I found any 
 chicken-hawk or wild ducks flying across my empy- 
 rean, I shot them at once. But this was sport and 
 much more edifying than squirting kerosene into the 
 two peach trees for the caterpillars hibernating or the 
 moths picnicking in every nook. 
 
 No foreboding of such pests had come to my dreams 
 of a country bungalow. They were not the necessary 
 game of a story writer. I hated to rush out in the 
 denouement of a plot to spend three days saving the 
 life of a gourd or a watermelon. It was irksome, when 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED .A BUNGALOW 53 
 
 guiding my heroine through a beautiful scene, to have 
 her turn in the powerful description and remind me 
 that the grasshoppers might at that moment be ab- 
 ducting my last cabbage. As my hero sat in a gilded 
 drawing-room telling witty stories to the ladies, he 
 would give me a glance over his shoulder and say, 
 "Kemember the tomatoes, old boy; I'll wait here for 
 you. ' ' 
 
 I wished that some Entomological Society or Profes- 
 sor of Bugs would visit my realm, as more data could 
 be obtained in my back yard than in traveling over all 
 the rest of the country. I myself knew more about 
 gnats than any one outside of the gnats themselves. 
 It took me but a few days to become the greatest 
 gnaturalist in the world. And the most comical- 
 phizzed grasshoppers that ever stood in solemn thought 
 did so on my grounds and on my desk. 
 
 For instance, now, what student of natural history 
 knows that when ladybugs commit suicide, they jump 
 sideways into an inkwell? Or that when rescued they 
 crawl up your sleeves and have an epileptic fit in the 
 soft part of your forearm? What other insect ob- 
 server would dream a spider is so stupid as to spin his 
 web in an egg-beater, and that when you purpose to 
 teach him a lesson by making that contrivance revolve 
 with rapidity, he will be hurled into a pan of milk? 
 Who ever heard that a beetle has such inquisitive in- 
 stincts it will crawl to a point on the ceiling directly 
 overhead and drop onto your book to see what you are 
 reading. We know the passion of the moth for the 
 flame. But who else has known a hundred moths to, 
 hide in a Japanese lantern all day waiting for the 
 candle to be lit at night? Think of the hostility of 
 bees that failing to sting to death the cuckoo of a clock. 
 
54 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 made honey inside the case and stopped up the cuckoo 
 with wax. 
 
 These things I have known and are common in the 
 husbandry at Procrastination Farm. 
 
 They remind me of the time that Ernest Woods 
 paid me a visit. -Woods was a Socialist and had just 
 been running a Socialist Weekly. After running it to 
 the ground, his theories soared to less worldy ethers 
 than ever. 
 
 Woods was tall and lank, wore a black suit, black 
 slouch hat, flowing black necktie and a black frown. 
 His mouth was wide as a propoganda, his nose a dia- 
 tribe on the evils of wealth. 
 
 I entertained him on the veranda, for he wished to 
 be near to Nature, having become disgusted with man- 
 kind. During his career as a journalist, more thrifty 
 than most of his kind, he had saved up $4, he said, 
 and being simple in his habits was in no danger of 
 Actual Want. Actual Want was the only thing in the 
 world admitted by him to be an excuse for unhappi- 
 ness. He always calculated the ills of mankind from 
 that basis. Just as every science and creed must be- 
 gin with some axiom, faith or assumption, so Woods' 
 philosophy took Actual Want for its foundation. And 
 it was a first-rate foundation for a castle in the air. 
 
 Woods was willing to work for a livelihood, but de- 
 sired to reform the world before laboring in it. 
 
 "The way this world goes on now," he averred, "I 
 would not give one beautiful dewdrop for all its lux- 
 uries. I would not barter one drop of peaceful man- 
 hood to take part in its most prized and glittering 
 infamies. As long as I have the price of a loaf of 
 bread, I shall refrain from doing a stroke of work in 
 the debauched industries of our present social system. 
 Of course, when a man comes to Actual Want, he is a 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 55 
 
 prisoner and must obey the law or die. If I had a 
 hundred dollars I'd put the 'Socialist News' on a solid 
 footing again. But I have not, and I'll have to make a 
 solid footing for my contentment instead. 
 
 "I'll tell what's the matter with this world. It is, 
 believe me, lost in a rank labyrinth of gaudy, stinking, 
 smug hypocricy, that fills its places like an over- 
 growth of poisonous tropical plants. And, until that 
 is removed, I shall refuse to enter into the scheme. I 
 refuse to join the illusion of riches. We are not rich 
 except with a plenitude of sins. And I'll tell you the 
 truth, I'm not indolent; I'd like to work if conditions 
 were fit to work in." 
 
 He sat as defiant as if sitting were the most char- 
 acteristic position a wise man could assume. With 
 knees far forth and feet folded under his chair, he 
 enjoyed his pipe, his opinions and the horizon. I had a 
 very fine horizon from my veranda. 
 
 " Woods," I vouchsafed, "what you need is physical 
 exercise. You have allowed yourself to grow grisly 
 with a too profound look at the truth. A little honest 
 or even dishonest excitement would be good for you; 
 it might change your whole view of life." 
 
 "I don't want to change it," he retorted very 
 quickly. "I wouldn't risk anything that might bring 
 about a change." 
 
 "You might be inspired to greater logic." 
 
 "No," he replied sadly; "don't say that. I can't 
 alter the truth; and no one, I venture to say, can alter 
 it for me." 
 
 Just then Woods struck himself a solid slap on the 
 back of the neck, for the mere purpose, I fancied, of 
 giving grotesque emphasis to his statement, until I 
 saw a magnificent specimen of thoroughbred mos- 
 quito wing itself away. 
 
56 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 4 'Say, that's a horrible feeling/ ' he cried, jumping 
 to his feet. I wouldn't live out here, rent and tobacco 
 free. How do you stand it? I wonder if your mos- 
 quitoes are the yellow-fever kind. The one that stung 
 me must have risen from the Swamps of Tartarus. 
 Filthy, blood-sucking pest. Symbol of the Capitalist 
 Class. When I get back to the City I'll stay there. A 
 man knows what he's getting anyway. He can select 
 his troubles in the City and not find them suddenly 
 tapping his lifeblood. Look at that flock of mos- 
 quitoes heading this way! Let's go in." 
 
 We entered the bungalow, where Woods applied 
 whiskey to the lump on his neck. 
 
 "Do you know what I've a mind to do?" he asked. 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "I've been offered a position soliciting advertise- 
 ments for a society paper in San Francisco. I don't 
 know which one it is ; but a friend of mine, running an 
 advertisement bureau, says he can show me how to 
 make $5 a day, if I'm willing. Maybe it is a good 
 thing, just to show the world what I can do." 
 
 "I think it would be," said I. 
 
 In about an hour he repented and said he would not 
 fool with the proposition at all. He was a pessimist 
 again, sitting in his chair as doleful as the Sands of 
 Time run' out. 
 
 Still, I thought that two or three more slaps on the 
 neck would have established the circulation of his 
 blood and made him an active citizen. The mosquito 
 cure for discontent has never been given a fair trial. 
 
DEBATE BETWEEN A REPORTER AND A 
 FARMER 
 
 One afternoon I was feeling under the weather and 
 was vainly trying to get on top, when Gilsey arrived 
 with the declaration that it was his day off. 
 . '"I was under the impression that all your days are 
 on 2 ," said I. 
 
 "No. Been working on the ' Chronicle.' Here's a 
 canary bird I brought for you. Got it for nothing 
 from a guy I interviewed. I knew you ought to have 
 some sort of a something to eat up all the chickweed 
 that grows around here. Nothing should go to waste 
 on a farm." 
 
 "Now, I shall have to get a cat," said I. "It would 
 be upsetting traditions to have a canary without a cat 
 to gaze up at it wistfully." 
 
 "Won't the pig do?" Gilsey suggested. He smiled 
 out the window, where the highly civilized pig was act- 
 ing with unusual animation. 
 
 "Did you ever find out," Gilsey continued, "whether 
 it was hog cholera or swine plague that carried off 
 your swillivorous quadrupeds?" 
 
 "No; I lost interest after their demise." 
 
 He went to the window. "Say," he ejaculated, 
 "there's something wrong with the survivor of all 
 your pigs. Acts drunk." 
 
 I looked. 
 
 "How is it," queried Gilsey, "that every time I 
 come here, I have to assist at the medical treatment of 
 part of your menagerie? First your hogs got the 
 tomestone stomachache. Then your chickens took the 
 gapes. Your mosquitoes, led by one of them demo- 
 gogues, tried to break up the government. Your cu- 
 cumbers got the mumps. Now the Pig of Melrose 
 
58 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 apparently has the willies, though I suppose that 
 scientific McCracken friend of yours wouldn't call it 
 by that name. Say, how do you write, anyway? Don't 
 you have to go to a neighboring ranch to get up a fif- 
 teen-minute inspiration? I believe Nature has the St. 
 Vitus Dance around here." 
 
 We went out to see the pig; which perturbed ani- 
 mal, descrying us, immediately scudded towards Gilsey, 
 who leapt over him. 
 
 "Piggiwig's nuzzle is all red and inflamed, and his 
 trotters and tail have a crimson tint. And he's deliri- 
 ous ; no doubt about that. Looks like scarlet fever. 
 Call McCracken," said the reporter, with a show of 
 compassion. 
 
 I went for the wisest of them all, who came and 
 ambled towards the frenzied porker. 
 
 "Poisoned!" cried McCracken. 
 
 The reporter took a sheet of copy paper from his 
 pocket. 
 
 "I hate to work on my day off, but I wouldn't miss 
 this," he said. "What is the name of this pig? Ah! 
 Just Pig. That's interesting." He made notes. "How 
 many miles from Melrose Station is this ? Uh huh ! 
 Educated pig. Runs about the house and grounds like 
 a dog, or as near like a dog as he can. Comes from 
 an unfortunate family. All his known relations died 
 from the effects of the hog cholera or swine plague- 
 experts are in doubt which. Even the Nestor of Mel- 
 rose was confounded, or was it dumbfounded well, no 
 matter. Could grunt 'yes' and squeal 'no;' smoked 
 a pipe and was fond of tenderloin of sole if cooked a 
 la Italienne. Poisoned ! Pathetic. Infamous deed. 
 Some unfeeling scoundrel identity unknown. Crime 
 unparalleled for peculiarity in the annals of Melrose. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 59 
 
 I wonder if death will occur in time for me to catch 
 the last train for the City/' 
 
 McCracken noticed some dry red leaves on the 
 ground. 
 
 "Shoat's eaten poison oak/' he asserted. 
 
 "Poison oak nothing/' exclaimed Gilsey. "Pigs fat- 
 ten on poison oak where I come from. Nothing but 
 cyanide of potassium will make a pig sick." 
 
 ' ' Well, ' ' half admitted the granger ; "but there 's 
 the poison oak and there's the pig. He found it some- 
 where. Any alcohol in your BUNGALOW ? " he asked 
 me. He always referred to my estate with an exasper- 
 ating accent on the word bungalow. 
 
 I had used up all my alcohol the day before by 
 dropping it on the brick fire-place. 
 
 McCracken went his bow-legged way home, while I 
 ran down to Melrose for sugar of lead, McCracken 
 cautioning me not to be cajoled into buying something 
 else ; he was almost sure I would be. We bade Gilsey 
 to watch the symptoms. 
 
 I made the purchase exactly as directed, and has- 
 tened back, not wishing Piggy to blame me for his 
 sufferings. On return, I inquired how the patient was 
 doing. 
 
 "Pig's only drunk," replied Gilsey. "I've seen 
 many a man with a sosh, and I ought to recognize it 
 in a pig." 
 
 McCracken mixed the sugar of lead in alcohol and 
 rubbed it on the affected parts, with much difficulty, 
 as the porker was giving a fine imitation of epilepsy, 
 blind staggers, delirium tremens and steeple-chasing. 
 Then he seemed to imagine himeslf a paper hoop and 
 tried to jump through himself. 
 
 Gilsey laughed. "He's got 'em. He sees snakes and 
 is trying to catch 'em, and he's puzzled. Quit with 
 
60 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 your alcohol; he's got enough alcohol inside of him 
 already. What the drunken little sausage needs is a 
 cup of black coffee. " 
 
 McCracken was never wont to pay attention to Gil- 
 sey's remarks, as he considered that reporter, for all 
 practical and agricultural purposes, a laughing mon- 
 strosity. He was struggling over the pig, in this ex- 
 citing clinic, when Gilsey kneeled beside the animal 
 and proceeded to address the farmer as follows: 
 
 "Mr. McCracken, you are a wise, a very wise man." 
 
 "Humph!' 7 said McCracken. 
 
 "However, there are limits to all earthly wisdom, 
 and that is why, and perhaps for that reason alone, I 
 have long believed you do not know everything. You 
 will pardon me for saying so." 
 
 "Humph!" said McCracken. 
 
 "You will observe, my wise friend, that the snorter 
 of this intelligent quadruped is of a bright scarlet hue. 
 He has what we would call in metropolitan parlance a 
 red nose. 
 
 "Uh!" said McCracken. 
 
 "You will also observe that some of the bristles 
 about this pig's nose are red at the base." 
 
 "Damn!" said McCracken, looking. 
 
 "Again, you will notice, upon closer examination, 
 that this poison oak is not poison oak, but rose leaves. 
 Even with my limited experience, I know this, for I 
 obtained them from a rose bush. The red spots on this 
 pig's nose, tail and feet are red ink. "With very little 
 knowledge of live stock, I know this, too, for I found 
 the fluid in a red ink bottle, and assumed with my 
 reportorial intuition that it was that what it purported 
 to be. Under the porch is a tin pail, in which your 
 sagacious nose will detect the aroma of Fine Old Bour- 
 bon, which I purchased in San Francisco. It makes 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 61 
 
 men act like drunken pigs, and I had no doubt that it 
 would conversely, cause a pig to act like a drunken 
 man. The whole affair proves to me that you do not 
 know the difference between poison oak and an artis- 
 tic combination of whiskey and crimson writing fluid, 
 though to me the similarity is not close by any means. 
 From the moment of first meeting you, I had a pale 
 gray inkling that you were not omniscient and infalli- 
 ble. Now I have a bright red inkling, and I'm satis- 
 fied. ' 
 
 McCracken arose and swore, at first irrelevantly, 
 then upbraiding himself for his rash judgment of the 
 pig's affliction. Amid his wrath, we caught such 
 phrases as " low-down blunder don't know how I 
 could a' done it man of my age and experience 
 guess I deserve all I get." 
 
 " Don't get mad, old man," remonstrated Gilsey. 
 "Everyone is liable to make a mistake." 
 
 "Not me!" 
 
 "No. But don't jump around like a fly in a bottle 
 just because you made one. Everybody does occa- 
 sionally. ' ' 
 
 "I never do." 
 
 "Don't bother." 
 
 "I do bother. I know I can't make a mistake with 
 animals; and now I've made one." 
 
 "Well, an intoxicated pig was not within your 
 course of study." 
 
 "Yes, it was. That's what I have my knowledge 
 for so dandiprats like you can't buncombe me. And 
 you can't either; but you did, I admit. You can take 
 all the credit. If I was the man to be fooled frequent, 
 or every now and then, I wouldn't care. But I'm proof 
 against tricks, and that's why it hurts me to be 
 tricked once." 
 
62 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 We went into the bungalow and had two consoling 
 drinks over the question, and McCracken's self -de- 
 nunciation partially eased off. 
 
 While I was preparing dinner, Gilsey informed me 
 that my bungalow was not run in as orderly a way as 
 it should be ; so he formulated a set of rules, which he 
 tacked onto the door. Perhaps they were unnecessary. 
 But here is Gilsey 's idea: 
 
 RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR PROCRASTINA- 
 TION FARM. 
 
 One Bell McCracken. 
 
 Two Bells Arnica. 
 
 Three Bells General alarm. 
 
 Visitors are requested not to mention fresh vege- 
 tables and dairy products, nor ask how the farm is 
 getting along. 
 
 Loud talking is not permitted near the vegetable 
 patch. It prevents the sprouting of the seed. 
 
 Don't say you expected a glass of buttermilk. All 
 our butter is made in Egypt. 
 
 Kindly refrain from expressing surprise at con- 
 densed milk. It comes from a condensed cow. 
 
 The cow is a good cow. Do not question it further 
 on the subject. 
 
 The dog Rowdy will not retrieve mosquitoes shot on 
 the highway. 
 
 Ladies bringing caramels for the Pig will kindly su- 
 perintend the chewing thereof and extricate the candy 
 from the pig's teeth as often as it loses control of the 
 same. 
 
 Guests are requested to furnish their own amuse- 
 ment between 4 o'clock and 4:10 p. m., as that is the 
 proprietor's period of creative literary work. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 63 
 
 If the rooster barks and willnot let you pass, pro- 
 nounce the magic word, Mangel-wurzel. 
 
 If any of the animals act in a weird and unearthly 
 way, ring one bell. 
 
 If caught on the barbed wire fence, ring one, two 
 and three bells consecutively. 
 
 When stung by an unknown insect, do not become 
 excited and upset the furniture, nor ask if anyone 
 heard it rattle before biting, but request the proprietor 
 to relate a much worse experience of his own. It re- 
 stores confidence. 
 
 If a moth is found in the coffee, do not swear, but 
 eount ten. Some people have counted a dozen. 
 
 No cameras allowed on the premises. 
 
HAVE YOU EVER FELT LIKE THIS? 
 
 Every one has some word which he holds in peculiar 
 aversion a word that disagrees with his temperament 
 even as an article of food goes against his stomach. 
 The very sight of it fills one with sudden discourage- 
 ment. It may be a fair enough word, a righteous 
 word, a popularly inoffensive word. But every time 
 you see it, hostility springs to the ramparts of your 
 soul and shouts, Away, perfidious thing ! Avaunt ! 
 Skedaddle. You and that short string of letters are 
 enemies for life. 
 
 In such abhorrence I held the word, " Perse verence." 
 It acted as an emetic on my patience. I loathed the 
 sight of it ; felt pained, grieved and unlucky at the 
 sound of it. Coming upon it in print or hearing it 
 in the voice of a friend was like being yelled at by the 
 philosophy of all the ages. And correspondingly, 
 "Perseverence" seemed to have a personal dislike for 
 me. With reptilian insinuation it leered into my face. 
 Jeered me. It whispered, "You can accomplish noth- 
 ing except by me. I am the greatest working prin- 
 ciple in the world. You hate me because you are as 
 lazy as a Bagdad beggar, listless as a cloud, perhaps 
 good for something, but destined for nothing at all, 
 because you do not PERSEVERE." 
 
 We prescribe a long trip to Hell for people who keep 
 advising us to change our ways. The more brilliant 
 the advice, the more tawdry our defense for not tak- 
 ing it. And here was one word that attacked me with 
 ever-increasing sharpness, backed with a multiplying 
 pageant of bad omens, that made me feel weak and 
 conquered. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 65 
 
 Occasionally I would surrender and resolve to give 
 Perseverence a trial. I would smoke the pipe of peace 
 and meditate and meditate and meditate until it was 
 time to go to bed. On the morrow, a half day would 
 be gone before I realized there was only a half of a day 
 left. In the remaining half I would deplore the loss 
 of the first half. 
 
 Once the tilling of the soil was like working on 
 a captured dream. After sowing the seeds I was whiz- 
 zing with impatience for their growth. I loitered and 
 watched for their coming up. One inspection a day 
 would not satisfy me. I went over the ground again 
 for a minuter scrutiny. Then, after walking away, 
 turn to see if anything had sprouted behind my back. 
 Upon entering the house I would go to the window 
 and take another glance at the expected soil. Writ- 
 ing a story, I would arise frequently and look for 
 developments. 
 
 Life had a poor prospect when ambition flogged as 
 indolence hugged me. But I blamed it on the beauty 
 of the universe. The sunsets filled me with too much 
 crimsom sublimity for dealing with ink and paper. 
 The skies were so large they made me feel too small 
 to work. The fresh air whimpered delicious lullabies 
 to my strength of purpose. From the soil emanated 
 antique dreams and mythologic nonentities. The odor 
 of a rose was a narcotic. The contemplation of Nature 
 stilled me. From the torpid atmosphere I lifted the 
 fancied lotus and ate with my soul. Enthralled ! 
 Amorously stupified ! I wandered amid the emblems 
 of eternity and forgot the time. 
 
 Then I roused and shook myself like a tree that, in 
 meaningless, I almost was. I became human again; 
 remorseful ; ambitious. I called myself the laziest 
 man in the world. This distinction gratified me. If 
 
66 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 I was the laziest in the world, I could be forgiven. 
 It was not my fault. 
 
 In the course of time I dug up enough carrots to 
 serve at four meals. Two cabbages represented my 
 toil over that blowzy green rose of the sod. The rad- 
 ishes were averagely good. The watermelons looked 
 very much like Easter eggs. The cucumbers died at 
 birth. But potatoes were plentiful; and the chickens, 
 cured of their egg-eating propensities, supplied me 
 well. 
 
 With all these ridiculous hardships, it was true that 
 hard times on a farm are not as lacerating as in the 
 City. Eesources are more pliable. They stretch when 
 you want them to. But a restaurant dinner won't 
 stretch at all, although more than a few of them feel 
 elastic between the teeth. As for my literary efforts, 
 in spite of this constitutional negligence, they kept 
 me even with the world. 
 
 Gradually I lost interest in agriculture. I did de- 
 sire to plant another lot of seeds. Time passed. The 
 seeds were not planted. My friends said I didn't 
 care. Little did they know how much I cared and 
 that I had merely lost the knack of starting in again. 
 Letters to friends were on my desk unanswered or 
 were lost. Visits to many of them were overdue, de- 
 linquent and unpaid, while I dreamt golcondas of 
 high-class, rich-quartz dreams that were worth about 
 $25,000 a ton. 
 
 This tranquility cost me a few hundred dollars one 
 time, and a lot of fame. I was in that state of mind 
 when one begins to feel romances about buried treas- 
 ure. I wondered whether there might not be some on 
 my premises. Pondering on buried treasure is nearly 
 the last resort of a vagrant mind. When the realms 
 of reality are slighted, the allurements of chance re- 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 67 
 
 ceive our footsteps. I was even at the point of rea- 
 soning out at what most likely spot near my fences 
 I should begin to dig. It would be horrible, mused 
 I, if the treasure were there and I not know it. 
 
 But one day I went worse than that. I neglected 
 to read the morning paper. The stationer's boy from 
 Melrose used to make his rounds on a bicycle and 
 throw the rolled newspaper against my door. What- 
 ever the mood of that moment, I had always gone out 
 on hearing the final publishing thud of the power of 
 the press against my front door. That day I paid no 
 attention to it. The condition was obvious. When a 
 former newspaperman no longer cares for the day's 
 news, he is in the last stage of uselessness. I had not 
 missed the paper a day in about five years. 
 
 And on that day I opened the door in answer to a 
 knock, and a trampish-looking fellow asked me if he 
 could come in and have a bite to eat. 
 
 "Free lunch for hoboes is usually served in the 
 back-yard," said I. 
 
 "I'm no hobo; I'm the King of Oakland," he re- 
 torted, picking up the newspaper and shutting the 
 door behind him. 
 
 I watched for his next move ; which was to draw 
 a large revolver and then to sit down, holding the 
 weapon in his lap. 
 
 I had left mine in a desk drawer. As soon as I 
 beheld the glittering shooter in his strong, dirty fing- 
 ers, the man took on a certain fascination for me. 
 His features became suddenly distinct with more than 
 ordinary realism. The high temples, the wide, rec- 
 tangular eyes, the slotty mouth, muscular jaw, pump- 
 kin-colored hair and about three days' growth of 
 beard became fixed in my attention to a miraculous de- 
 gree. 
 
68 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 "I'll get you something to eat," I said. 
 
 "Wait a moment," he commanded; "111 go with 
 you to see if you don't poison it." 
 
 "Why should I wish to poison the King of Oak- 
 land?" 
 
 He laughed. "Kings have to be careful. Our lives 
 are always in danger." 
 
 At first I took him for a highwayman, and as he 
 made no move to practice with his gun, felt fairly at 
 ease. Now that he gave symptoms of lunacy, I was 
 more nervous of his whim, I sat down. 
 
 "Hey, villain," he whispered, "don't do anything 
 like that again without asking me permission. You 
 give me a shock." And he brandished the revolver. 
 
 I arose again. 
 
 "Wow!" he cried in a hoarse voice. "Don't do 
 that, I told you. Give me notice before you make a 
 move?" 
 
 I was willing to accommodate him. Lunatics are 
 ticklish and hard to please, especially the King sort. 
 One little unintentional act of discourtesy, and it's 
 high treason to them. With a revolver to back up 
 their verdict, it makes any extemporaneous subject 
 nothing less than a flatterer. I had never dreamed of 
 being flatterer to a King; fawning for prince's fav- 
 ors. But now I can easily see how the habit comes 
 upon one. I forgave those old hypocritical courtiers. 
 Imagine a despot with about twenty halberdiers and 
 a few black-masked executioners hanging around, and 
 who would care to differ with him on a political or 
 religious question? 
 
 I bowed to the King of Oakland and asked his royal 
 will. 
 
 His majesty wished me first to turn my back and 
 lift my coat. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 69 
 
 "All right; just wanted to see if you carry a gun. 
 Now get me a spread of food. But go slow. Remem- 
 ber, my nerves are very bad and I can't stand a sud- 
 den performance of any kind. They make my royal 
 heart jump like royal popcorn. " 
 
 "Quite so, your majesty." 
 
 How easily we can adapt ourselves to the weirdest 
 circumstances ! One can be a smiling, sycophantish 
 courtier at short notice. And to think I had ever 
 wasted time at anything when I could become a 
 mediaeval hypocrite in a moment. Not that the 
 mediaeval part was so much of a change, but the 
 hypocricy. I wished Gilsey were there to see me and 
 take notes for a Sunday story. 
 
 "Now, slowly to the kitchen. " 
 
 "As you will, your majesty." 
 
 "And now for a banquet." 
 
 "Yea, my liege." 
 
 I prepared a meal of bacon and eggs, coffee, bread 
 and butter, oranges and grocery store cakes. While 
 I was doing so, he unrolled the newspaper and pro- 
 ceeded to read. Yet it was plain, through the cor- 
 ners of my eyes and the reflections in the coffee pot, 
 that he was not failing to observe my slightest move. 
 When the breakfast was ready he folded the news- 
 paper and put it into his pocket. Not wishing to dis- 
 turb his equilibrium by making overt, and what he 
 might consider vulgar, comment upon this bit of royal 
 prerogative, I said nothing about it, and served the 
 victuals. 
 
 "Be seated and eat in the presence of your King," 
 he said. 
 
 "Your majesty," quoth I, "your humble henchman 
 hungers not, but would fain guard thee whilst thou 
 eatest." 
 
70 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 "Eat, slave, " he shouted, fidgeting and waggling 
 his revolver. 
 
 Had he pointed it or even flourished it, I should not 
 have cared as much. The act would have betokened 
 some degree of reserve and calm. But to sit before a 
 fidgeted, waggled revolver adds the element of chance 
 to personal truculence, and I speedily acquiesced, will- 
 ing to humor my monarch by eating, although I had 
 breakfasted just before. 
 
 "Eat first; so that I can see you have not plotted 
 to poison me." 
 
 "I ate with gusto. " 
 
 He did likewise, after waiting with studious zeal to 
 observe the effects of the food on me. I ate, trusting 
 that nothing deleterious had gotten into the food by 
 mistake. 
 
 After satisfying his hunger, my guest inquired what 
 occupation might be mine. 
 
 I told him I was a newspaperman in the main. 
 
 "Ah, I have dealt with the vile press and been in- 
 terviewed frequent. " 
 
 "To be sure, your majesty." 
 
 A pause, and then he said, "Say, man, if I could 
 trust you, I could put you in the way of making a 
 little dish of money." 
 
 I told him he could trust me in that particular, as 
 I had had that very idea for a long time. 
 
 "I don't know. Kings have got to be careful with 
 their plans." 
 
 "Believe me, I can keep a secret." 
 
 The word, "secret," evidently thrilled him, for he 
 sat up and asked me not to be so wise. 
 
 "However," he replied, "I wish I could trust you; 
 you'd make a couple of hundred at least. You've 
 treated me white." 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 71 
 
 "Tell me the trick." 
 
 "I would tell you if I could trust you." 
 
 "Really, you can trust me to your heart's content." 
 
 "I know I can; but maybe I oughtn't." 
 
 "All right then; let it pass." 
 
 "All the same, I wish I could trust you. I'd like 
 to see you get the stuff. Now, suppose : He 
 seemed on the point of telling. 
 
 "'Yes; suppose " 
 
 "No; I guess I better not tell." 
 
 "All right." 
 
 "But suppose " 
 
 "Yes; suppose " 
 
 "Suppose that I had but I have not escaped from 
 an insane asylum." 
 
 "Just for the sake of argument, my liege." 
 
 "Exactly. And suppose the whole country looking 
 for me." 
 
 "They naturally would." 
 
 "Of course, if they find me, I go back. If they 
 don't find me, I'm a big mystery. The King of Oak- 
 land missing ! See ? Of course you do. Now, you, as 
 a newspaperman, know the value of a mystery. You 
 have entertained me at your home. Have you a cam- 
 era? Good. Now, you write me up. The King of 
 Oakland entertained in royal magnificence by a news- 
 paperman. All the newspapers of San Francisco 
 search for the missing King. Can't find him. If I'm 
 caught, they all interview me. Not much of a story. 
 Captured too soon. If you help me to escape, you 
 prolong the mystery, and write it up big. See?" 
 
 "If it were just a little true, how lucky," thought I. 
 
 "The grand idea is in waiting until the excitement 
 gets up to 110 in the shade." 
 
 So I imagined. I would have been willing to help 
 
72 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 a spectacular lunatic escape, in order to get a story, 
 if it were not for that revolver, which he might reck- 
 lessly use on a passer-by that peradventure would not 
 recognize his royalty. 
 
 ''King," I inquired with deep feeling, "have you 
 ever killed a man?" 
 
 "No; I swear I have not." 
 
 "I. don't mean in cold blood, 'with malice afore- 
 thought, but merely by accident, in the pursuit of 
 your royal will?" 
 
 "No; I haven't." 
 
 "Of course, I don't mean murdered him, but just 
 playfully, as a joke, as a royal whim. Did you ever 
 knock a base varlet on the head with your sceptre, 
 to see what he would do? Did you ever, while dis- 
 playing the eccentricity of genius, to which all mon- 
 archs are prone, hit one of your subjects over the 
 head with a silver mace or a potato-masher, not in- 
 tending to end his earthly wanderings, but, to your 
 surprise, he had to go to the Coroner's Jury." 
 
 "No; never! Upon my honor!" 
 
 Presently he arose to go. "Friend," said he, "I'm 
 glad to see you can take a joke. I don't happen to 
 be the King of Oakland. Just a hobo. Thought I 
 would amuse myself and you while I 'ate breakfast. 
 You didn't mind my gun-play, did you? The eccen- 
 tricity of genius, as you call it, is my only fault." He 
 put the weapon back into his pocket. "I might come 
 back some time, and hope you will invite me for din- 
 ner. " He asked me for a sandwich, which he took 
 with a jocular bow, and departed. 
 
 That same evening, walking down to Melrose, I saw 
 his picture in the afternoon paper. He had been cap- 
 tured, having committed jailbreak the day before. 
 Burglary was his trade. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 73 
 
 It was the first time in years I had neglected to 
 read the morning news, which he had carried away 
 with him and which contained a full account of his 
 escape. Perhaps I would have let him remain at the 
 bungalow while I took his photograph and a romantic 
 account of his escape to a City paper. It would have 
 been a fancy sensation. Here Opportunity had not 
 only knocked at my door but forced its way in with a 
 pistol. But the lazy man waits for Opportunity to 
 come around with banners and a brass band, take his 
 arm and lead him to a seat of glory. 
 
THE TINTS OF NATURE 
 
 One day I received a quaint letter. My morning's 
 mail was usually full of printed matter, advertise- 
 ments of chicken-louse exterminators, churns, butter 
 colorings, fertilizers, plows, corporation stocks, apple- 
 corers, airships, books everything that genius could 
 invent for folly to invest in. Now and then came in- 
 vitations to buy type, addressed to a printing firm with 
 which I was once associated. Some of these ads were 
 scrawled with several addresses, showing how I had 
 been tracked from point to point by the Post Office 
 Department. Once in a while, or twice or thrice in 
 a while I received a check from a magazine or news- 
 paper. This would retouch the universe with splendor, 
 and my soul immediately take on a new and optomistic 
 philosophy. 
 
 Howbeit, this letter was from a literary friend in 
 New York, requesting from me certain information 
 of which I was possessed. I was ardent therefore to 
 impart it to him. 
 
 He stated that he was about to write a story of Cali- 
 fornia life and desired me to send him some memoranda 
 of local color and atmosphere. For, he wrote, "I de- 
 sire the story to have a truthful setting, which should 
 be appreciated as well by one familiar with the ground 
 as admired by an Easterner. As you know, I have 
 never been in California, and without special prepara- 
 tion (thanking you in advance) might easily put into 
 the narrative matters which a Californian would at 
 once detect as incongruous, to say the least. My idea 
 is to portray the life and sentiments of the good coun- 
 try folk with fidelity. So I rely upon you for the in- 
 formation/' etc., etc. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 75 
 
 To this communication I replied as follows : 
 
 My dear friend : You are certainly to be commended 
 for being thus punctilious and painstaking about your 
 work. And I rejoice in being peculiarly fit to supply 
 your needs. I have always had a love for local color 
 and atmosphere. Within the last year, this inclination 
 has been allotted a profusion of its loved environment. 
 The benefit of the same I give to you cheerfully, as 
 appertaining to my own acreage, which consists of a 
 full and undivided acre. 
 
 Let us take up the matter systematically. Starting 
 with Nature in its broadest sense, then noticing its 
 fauna and flora, its insect life and thus gradually get 
 down to man. I shall not even trust my memory for 
 these things, but take a notebook out in the open and 
 give you vivid, realistic impressions taken on the spot. 
 
 Before getting down to detail, allow me to state, ere 
 I might overlook the fact, that the universe is grand. 
 Do not forget this in your enthusiasm over minor 
 points. You may have a fairly good view of the uni- 
 verse in your part of the country, as truly the uni- 
 verse extends to all places on earth. But mayhap you 
 never noticed the grandeur of it in the limited scope 
 and smaller distances out East. So I note it in your 
 behalf. 
 
 Next, as to Nature hereabouts. Nature is sublime. 
 Whatever pessimists, humorists and skeptics you may 
 have read to the contrary, take a straight tip from me : 
 Nature is the greatest thing on earth today. Sections 
 of it there may be where the interest sags dark, liver- 
 colored spots with fungi and decaying animal matter. 
 But, speaking without bias, Nature is, in the aggregate, 
 sublime. 
 
 I now take paper and pencil into the landscape, 
 
76 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 which lies immediately outside my front door, to give 
 you the -Local color and atmosphere sketched from life. 
 
 The first thing I observe is the sky. It is blue. Far 
 to the north the pure tint is somewhat overcast with 
 a milky exudation, that seems to have curdled ; and on 
 the west are fluffy cloud-like masses resembling about 
 $3.50 worth of absorbent cotton pulled apart and scat- 
 tered without purpose or design. But over my farm 
 the sky is exceedingly blue. I enclose you real es- 
 tate prospectus of a tract of land about a mile from 
 here, in which is poetically described the azure of that 
 place. All visitors declare that my azure is superior. 
 So you can judge for yourself. Directly overhead 
 where I am now standing is the highest point in the 
 heavens :the zenith, of which you have doubtless read. 
 It is but a point in the sky and indistingushable by 
 any mark from the surrounding expanse ; but a straight 
 and absolutely vertical line downward from it would 
 pass directly through the spot on which I now stand. 
 You really ought to come here and stand on it, as 
 the experience is without parallel. On my neighbor 
 McCracken's farm, for instance, the line to this zenith 
 would be oblique. But he is an unsentimental fellow 
 and does not care. 
 
 All around me is the horizon. Partially obscured 
 by intervening houses, hills and trees, it extends never- 
 theless in a circle, a small arc of which was unfor- 
 tunately destroyed the other day by a forest fire. 
 This horizon is full of landscape and local color, some 
 of which I shall attempt to describe. 
 
 The general color of the landscape varies, of course, 
 with the season of the year. There are two seasons : 
 the dusty and the muddy. At the present time, the 
 hue is asort of suet antique and scrambled buff, with 
 a veiling of sneeze-dust. This is relieved here and 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 77 
 
 there with gaudy splashes of scarlet underwear hang- 
 ing out to dry. Some of the roads are fine pastel 
 effects of Egyptian gray with fences of raek-and-ruin 
 drab. Most of the houses are about the color of a 
 47-year-old farmhand, the trees in their backyards, 
 or what an artist would call backgrounds, being very 
 much the local color of a cucumber or a frog; the 
 trunks and branches are a familiar brown. Some- 
 times pretty birds twitter in the twigs ; but when you 
 listen they fly away. 
 
 In the distance is invisible a lavender haze; and 
 beyond that is more distance, which you cannot see. 
 
 My bungalow is a sort of maroon. The paint, in 
 drying split up in a sort of maroon. The paint, in 
 anda posts, which support an awning, are gray, and 
 here the heat has caused the paint to rise in blisters, 
 which I have made dimples by pressing my forefinger 
 into them. Dimples are much more attractive than 
 blisters. The window panes are semi-transparent. 
 
 Now for the pasture and its two graminvorous 
 inmates. It is the color of the ordinary newspaper- 
 man and magazine writer's pasture, and polka-dotted 
 with brown. The. cow answers to the name of lo, 
 if she happens to be looking your way and you carry 
 a bucket of middlings. She is what you might call 
 a crushed strawberry, not so much in shape as in local 
 color aforesaid. This fades to a fine French pink 
 towards the horns and deepens into a rich bologne 
 flush at the other extreme. She is dusty and cross- 
 hatched with straw on the left side from sirloin to 
 flank. One of her horns is stuck through a small 
 cardboard box. Minotaur II, the bull (former sobri- 
 quet, "Veal") is, strange to say, an ecru tint; his 
 ^reputed father having been black and his mother red. 
 
 Chickens and vegetables you can describe from your 
 
78 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 own imagination. Eggs you have observed in New 
 York. Chickens lay them when they have time. 
 
 My surplus vegetables I export chiefly to France. 
 Russia is the greatest consumer of my watermelons. 
 Most of my cabbages I sell to artists, who portray 
 them in oils as lying on a dark table with a deck of 
 cards, a cigar stump and an old violin. Split peas 
 I sell in San Francisco ; and my Wagnerian beans go 
 to Kansas. 
 
 I ought to caution you that this emblazonry of 
 Vegetable and animal life is found only in rare in- 
 stances in this state. If you are going to write up the 
 ordinary California farm, you should tone down these 
 effects considarably. Again, this display of local 
 color is, you must understand, merely the practical 
 or utilitarian view of my estate. How then,it can be 
 imagined, is this pictorial spread augmented by the 
 ornamental hues of such as the black and yellow 
 fur caterpillar flecking the foliage and eating as he 
 flecks; the red-corseted ladybug strolling amid the al- 
 falfa ; butterflies in pale blue, Numidian black and 
 terra cotta; hundreds of grasshoppers with wings like 
 stained glass ; the variegated cinch hug in the pasture ; 
 the delicate but somber peach-twig borer; the harle- 
 quin bees and the irridescent flies; making the air 
 flash like fairyland when a scandal is being told about 
 Queen Mab. 
 
 As for atmosphere, there is a great deal of that 
 around here, too ; but not as much as when I main- 
 tained a pigsty. Chickens, of course, have an atmos- 
 phere of there own; all animals have. But so many 
 fragrant breezes dally around this part of the country, 
 taking the Augean odors occasionally to Santa Clara 
 County, that the air is practically fresh all the time. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 79 
 
 If it isn't we use chloride of lime. So the usual at- 
 mosphere is one of industry and contentment. 
 
 I arise with the lark, and write stories, dramas, 
 novels, critical reviews, jokes and sonnets until 2 p. m. ; 
 then, after a wholesome repast, cultivate the acreage 
 until sundown. Every time the sun goes down, I feel 
 sad, I know not why. Any one who does not should 
 feel ashamed of himself, or know not why not. 
 
 Thus we go on from day to day, learning the les- 
 sons of life, working hard with brain and brawn, read- 
 ing good books by the evening lamp, adding to our 
 stores from Nature's bounty, becoming wealthier in 
 this world's goods and the love of beauty; not proud 
 therefor, but rather does it make us modest in our 
 riches and generous to. all mankind. This should make 
 your story interesting in the extreme, and unsur- 
 passed in fidelity to the truth. 
 
 We now come to examples of humankind in person. 
 First, there is neighbor McCracken. He is full of lo- 
 cal color. Peradventure some of it would come off if 
 he should fall into a pond and be unable to get out 
 for half an hour; still is he, to my way of thinking, all 
 the more local on that account. A casual observer 
 would esteem him as exhibiting little more than the 
 neutral shades of a last year's chicken coop in the 
 glow of an overripe sunset. This would be an in- 
 justice. Once his overalls and shirt were blue, his 
 face a sort of tokay, and his wide-spreading beard an 
 Iowa brown. He is but the memoirs of all these now, 
 as their pristine tones have merged into one another. 
 
 McCracken has a kind of straw-colored wife. She is 
 tall, Puritanical and very fond of being silent. Her 
 complexion is that of a cement sidewalk; nose some- 
 what darker ; and she is moose-eyed ; the mouth is 
 sharper on one side than the other, like a small par- 
 
80 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 snip. Her hair is of an autumnal okra; hands of a 
 soap-sud pallor. On such description, you might not 
 think she is worth much, but as she works very hard 
 and eats little, there can be no honest objection to her. 
 
 I have not the space to illuminate all the nearby 
 population, but will mention the most colorific of them 
 all, Winifred Klenkey. Winifred's usual appearance 
 is like the banner county of a State Fair. Her shoes 
 are tan, splashed with bluing and whitewash. Her 
 stockings are a faded scarlet, with white polka dots; 
 skirt a cranberry red; waist pinkish; and apron a 
 faint aquamarine glittering with the yelk of eggs. A 
 once-yellow ribbon encircles her waist ; around her 
 neck is a black band from which dangles a gold- 
 plated heart locket ; and two green bows stick up from 
 her hair. The said ringlets are of a leghorn hue, above 
 a complexion of oleomargarine, relieved with apricot 
 and a few dozen Lyonnaise freckles. Her eyes are 
 the color of gizzards. Her mouth is so big she can 
 bite a 5-cent pie in half and, without choking, ask if 
 You are going to eat all the rest of it. She loves and 
 is loved by a yokel within six telegraph poles of her 
 home, but who has confided to me that he thinks her 
 untrue to him, and wants to know if it were not better 
 to relinquish her now than wait until the separation 
 might cause him still more anguish. I said, Be brave 
 and trust to luck. He said he would do so and that 
 my advice had made him feel better right away. 
 
 Thus you see how we live, replete with local color 
 and atmosphere, far more exalted than our sunless 
 fellow-creatures in the City. 
 
 Now, I desire you to write and tell me if you in- 
 tend to have mangel-wurzels in your story, as I can 
 tell you enough about them to make all your rival 
 authors jealous and heart-sick. They will swoon with 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 81 
 
 despair and bump their noses on the weathered oak 
 of their desks if you should make use of my knowl- 
 edge of mangel-wurzels. I would require about a 
 week to transcribe most of what I know about them. 
 
 Wishing you cherubimical success and circumforane- 
 ous fame, I remain, Yours, 
 
 L. J. 
 
EVOLUTION OF A USEFUL ARTICLE 
 
 When dwelling in one small city room, a few years 
 ago, I was frequently at loss for a place in which to 
 lose things a repository for the useless, a reliquary for 
 the worthless relics of pleasure such as old bottles, 
 faded flowers, newspapers, unheeded letters and so on. 
 In a rented room, one is not presumed to require a 
 large dumping-ground for his poverty-stricken con- 
 venience. The funerals of his wasted materials should 
 not occupy the attention of the household to any 
 marked degree. And yet, throughout existence we 
 all cast behind us innumerable things no longer of 
 worth, scraps, remnants, refuse, rubbish. Life is 
 trailed by this garbage of ruin. Beauty drags a path 
 of swill. A little too deep for this frivolous disquisi- 
 tion. But, I was merely peeking back at the past. 
 Few of us, kind friends, realize how deep and curious 
 the past from which we trip so blithely. 
 
 I have always taken a meteoric delight in throwing 
 things away. Often have I wished to own more things, 
 just in order to get rid of them; to strew the past care- 
 lessly with the fragments of enjoyment. And I was 
 prone to do so without concern for the immortal house- 
 keeping instincts of those whose duty it might be to 
 clean and rearrange. 
 
 But I forebore. Being a supposedly civilized mem- 
 ber of an alleged civilized community, I had no right 
 to conjure up chaos, enrich the world with confusion, 
 pile it with cast-offs. My landlady had given me an 
 art nouveau ash-tray on which to deposit such chaos, 
 confusion and what not. But had I the right as a 
 potentate, and were the inhabitants my slaves, I 
 surely would make them work. There would be no in- 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 83 
 
 dolence in my dominions. I should have a score of 
 flunkeys following me about and picking up things. 
 
 Should some one present me with a diamond ring, I 
 would strip off the wrapping paper and string, drop 
 them on the polar bear rug, break the plush box in two, 
 throw one piece at the piano and the other at the 
 Venus de Milo; then put the ring on my finger. 
 
 On receiving an editor's check for $1000, and before 
 placing it in my alligator-skin wallet, I would tear the 
 accompanying letter and envelope into little bits and 
 toss them nonchalantly at the chandelier. 
 
 When the recipient of a large green-and-gold por- 
 celain vase, securely packed in a box of excelsior, I 
 would smash open the box, slide the boards under the 
 parlor chairs and dig through the excelsior swiftly, 
 casting it all around me ; then carry the vase to the 
 mantelpiece, perhaps dropping it accidentally on the 
 fire-tongs, and light a cigarette. 
 
 Searching for an article in my trunk, I would heave 
 to the ceiling the intervening contents until finding the 
 article wished for. 
 
 When eating bananas in my robes of state, I would 
 fling the skins to the polished floor or at the faces of 
 my gentlemen-in-waiting and over my shoulder at the 
 power behind the throne. 
 
 And all this, simply because for several months I 
 had had one small art nouveau ash-tray to be used for 
 such purposes. I believe even that when looking for 
 a word in a dictionary, I would tear out the leaves 
 instead of turning them from the page I wanted. 
 
 But away with dreams ! It was my custom, I remem- 
 ber, when sharpening a lead pencil, to retain the chips 
 and graphite dust on a piece of paper, fold this neatly 
 into a little package, and mucilage the same up tight. 
 These accumulated and were given in charge of the 
 
84 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 chambermaid to dispose of. Occasionally visitors, 
 out of curiosity, would open these packages, becoming 
 intensely disgusted on viewing the contents and neg- 
 lect to seal them up again. 
 
 Subsequently I cleared a space on my writing- 
 table for slips of paper no longer needed, old memor- 
 andums, useless correspondence, first manuscript 
 copies, etc. These, however, soon increased to such 
 quantities that they overran the desk. The papers 
 were always mixed, amalgamated and sliding. When 
 dawning with genius above my day's work, I had to 
 consume preparatorily a quarter of an hour getting 
 together the pages already written. Daily the trouble 
 spread its confused wings and rumpled my patience. 
 
 Then a vast, nebulous, twelve-portiered vision un- 
 folded itself before me. In the center of the vision 
 was a waste-paper basket. I ceased work for the day 
 to go out and purchase one. It was of rattan and held 
 about five gallons; not of water but air; hypothetical 
 gallons. Its working principle was a joy. All I had 
 to do was throw things into the basket, and next morn 
 they were dumped out. Thus the waste-paper side of 
 my life seemed destined to a path of happiness. But 
 one day I committed a blunder. The desk being full 
 of papers that I absolutely could not lose, and which 
 could nowise be disturbed, I looked around for a 
 place to put a fresh page of manuscript. No spot was 
 within reach except the basket, which was half full. 
 Above this heap I placed the precious page. A few 
 minutes later I had occasion to precipitate a bunch of 
 scraps into the waste basket, but took good thought 
 not to forget what it contained. 
 
 Any one familiar with the follies and divergencies 
 of the human mind will understand how I succeeded 
 thereafter in establishing several stratums of alternate 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 85 
 
 rubbish and good copy in that rattan enclosure. So 
 that when the maid came in the morning to empty the 
 same, I spoke forth, "Beware, woman! Touch not that 
 hallowed receptacle. It contains what you wot not 
 of." 
 
 She desisted, after protest, in the excitement of 
 which I lost my blank verse manner and placated her 
 in slang. 
 
 During several days that twelve-page plot remained 
 incomplete, while I was in high -hopping fear lest some 
 menial remove the basketful. This happened to sev- 
 eral stories. So that when I had to get my pages to- 
 gether, it meant a search through many layers of 
 wastiana. 
 
 The next stage of progress was the dropping of 
 manuscripts on one section of the floor and discarded 
 sheets on another. The basket, anyway, when full, 
 and packed above its fulness, would topple over on 
 its side and did not accommodate half the demand upon 
 it. Yet these places on the floor came to be so useful 
 and easy of acess that they eventually arose high and 
 wide, and merged. Whenever I washed to find a cer- 
 tain manuscript or dispose of the others, the same old 
 search had to be gone through. And to prevent pos- 
 sible loss, a perusal of the whole miscellaneous heap 
 was held. 
 
 The growing needs of increased literary activity now 
 called for some new device that could be practiced 
 without exertion. It w T as a case for inventive genius. 
 So that, when installed in the bungalow, I pondered 
 over the construction of a suitable container of waste 
 paper, one that should require no such delicacy of ~ 
 handling as had my previous ones a new appliance 
 that a child could operate, a careless, mischievous 
 child at that. Such a one I felt capable of controlling. 
 
86 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 Upon a day, writing with unwonted vigor, and not 
 minded with worldly matters, I had occasion to dis- 
 pense with a newspaper clipping held in my hand. 
 The window was open. Quite absent-mindedly I rolled 
 the strip of paper into a ball and threw it out into the 
 yard. 
 
 One might say that the ensuing idea came like a 
 flash. But it was not a plain, ordinary, commonplace 
 flash ; it was a fine, extraordinary, rich, rare flash, one 
 like that which the calcium-man directs upon the skirt- 
 dancer. 
 
 The rest was the personification of simplicity. I 
 would use the great western hemisphere for a waste 
 basket. The only skill required was to squeeze the 
 paper into a lump and project it out the window. In 
 cold weather, with the window shut, the missiles could 
 be sent against the window-panes and drop thence into 
 a long box, to be upset, when full, out the window 
 aforesaid. Its only complexity was to refrain from 
 throwing anything valuable in that direction. With 
 this precaution, no sifting of the dumping-place should 
 transpire. 
 
 Thus scholars can see how, for my purposes, the 
 world evolved from a thiny parcel of lead pencil 
 shavings. 
 
AFTER ALL 
 
 I despise a man who is sarcastic without cark or 
 care how miserable he makes others feel. He does not 
 care a jot how others cark a lot. His jokes are not 
 for general enjoyment but are so fashioned that he 
 consumes all the laughter himself. He observes a fel- 
 low creature make a perfectly human mistake, and im- 
 mediately fills up with glee ; then he blurts out a few 
 happy remarks and lets this glee roll into the circum- 
 jacence with a loud, rollicking sound, which gradually 
 dies away to a sickening snicker. This is very easy. 
 Anybody can do it. But few of us are so enthusiastic 
 over other folks' failures as to try to evoke gaiety in 
 this manner. 
 
 Every time Gilsey came to Melrose, now, he ap- 
 peared with the same raspberry-jam smile all over his 
 mouth. He offered me the opportunity of joining in 
 with his jest and then found I had no sense of humor 
 for refusing to laugh. 
 
 "You do not appreciate my subtle wit," he would 
 say. 
 
 "No," I replied; "I do not. I judge wit by its 
 effect. Every time you repeat this mildewed, blighted, 
 Sebean jest, I at once feel like a lonely wanderer on 
 the River Styx. The gloom of ages gathers about me. 
 My heart is chilled. Beautiful memories shudder and 
 fall to the purgatorial sod. I have visions of lopsided 
 ghosts gesticulating in dismay. I get the Elysian 
 blues. Melancholy hangs on me like a robe of cob- 
 webs. Other phenomena take place which it would be 
 useless to mention. But it is proof to me that there 
 is no real humor in that which you express so jaunt- 
 ily. Were it humor, I should doubtless smile against 
 
88 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 my own will. On the contrary it only causes me bit- 
 terness. " 
 
 I do not think Gilsey understood a word of this. 
 He was too superficial. But what can you expect from 
 a poor, underpaid reporter? I mean underpaid in 
 regard to living expenses ; as to ability he was remun- 
 erated far beyond his merits. 
 
 Suppose you should give expression to a conceit you 
 considered funny ; not that it actually were so, but you 
 considered it to be. We may even assume, for the 
 sake of argument, that it is funny, very funny. But 
 would you wish to arouse merriment on the part of 
 one listener with it time after time again? Does not 
 a joke become old and haggard? Those to whom it is 
 a novelty may be amused in spite of its malice. But 
 why expect one man to laugh and grow fat on it con- 
 tinuously. 
 
 It became Gilsey 's habit, when he visited Procrast- 
 ination Farm, to present me with a parcel of carrots, 
 accompanied by the statement that the ordinary canned 
 goods produced on a farm must become monotonous, 
 and so he had brought me some fresh vegetables from 
 the City. 
 
 "Gilsey," said I, "the long-tailed carrot is not, as 
 I understand it, conducive to jocularity in any form. 
 There must be some unfortunate idiosyncracy in your 
 brain, perhaps hereditary, that makes you believe to 
 the contrary. The belief is a hallucination, and 
 would it were in my power to help you eradicate it. 
 I extend you my heartfelt pity." 
 
 He rejoined: "I do this only to show, in a slight 
 way, my gratitude. Once I was penniless. -You took 
 me in and gave me food and shelter. You backed my 
 hopes financially. I know you cannot get carrots on 
 a farm, and so I bring these. It is true there may be 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 89 
 
 a selfish motive in the act. I may go broke again. 
 And I wish to cherish your friendship." 
 
 That is why I yearned to triumph over him by rais- 
 ing a stupendous crop of vegetables. Just how to do 
 so, I was not fully apprised. But I agreed with my- 
 self that by slip or slap I would capture a method, and 
 that Gilsey, on arrival at Procrastination Farm, would 
 be shattered in spirit to behold vegetables galore. 
 
 Ah! And I did succeed. You would not have rec- 
 ognized the place when first it showed its agricultural 
 fecundity in a formal way. All the vegetables grew in 
 rows. Each sort was a uniform size and quality; 
 lined up as if on exhibition for the Superintendent of 
 a school of vegetables. There were corn, potatoes, 
 carrots, onions, strawberries, melons, asparagus, cab- 
 bages, lettuce, squash, tomatoes. Every season of the 
 year produced something. Oats, corn and red clover 
 grew for lo and Minotaur. From a distance, the rose 
 bushes looked like a gala fleet under full sail. 
 
 "Clara," said I one day 
 
 (We had been married for more than a year.) 
 
 Clara was a most peculiar person in more than one 
 way. She would listen to McCracken talk about sea- 
 sons for sowing and irrigating and fertilizing ; then 
 she could follow his advice without forgetting a word. 
 Donning a pair of buckskin gloves, she tinkered and 
 tampered and dibbled with the earth, and when she 
 had said that certain vegetables would appear at a 
 certain time, the time and vegetables came hand in 
 hand. Attired in simple gray, with a wide yellow 
 hat, she played with the soil and the seasons as if 
 posing for a picture. The snap camera never could 
 have caught Clara unpicturesquely. She worked like 
 an artist, decorating the earth with leafy creations. 
 
90 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 "Let me rake this row," I said one day; "I want 
 to be a farmer a little while." 
 
 There we walked, her hand in mine, while I raked 
 even clumsily with the other. 
 
 "That's enough for that," said she. 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "I know because it's the right way," she replied. 
 
 I could not see how that was strictly material and 
 why there could not be a hundred ways of raking. 
 But she knew, or being more successful than I, could 
 pretend to with better effect. 
 
 McCracken declared it had always been his opinion 
 that all my place required was common sense ; that 
 as for himself he never understood how any one could 
 do anything the wrong way. 
 
 I suppose I should have been more common-sensi- 
 ble all along. I was in an murky, awe-inspiring state 
 when Clara found me, the year before. I say "found" 
 me, because I was actually lost in reverie and neglect. 
 The grounds had had a horror-stricken appearance. 
 The windows looked haunted. My writing table and 
 the surrounding room looked like Hope's moving-day. 
 
 Clara called with an oh-and-ah sort of a woman 
 whom she had promised to show a country bungalow 
 and its rusticated bungalower. 
 
 We were walking in the "garden." No one save 
 myself and Gilsey knew that it was a garden. A num- 
 ber of thorns still clung to leafless rose bushes, though. 
 
 "You look a trifle obsolescent," remarked Clara, as 
 her friend romped with Eowdy. 
 
 "Yes; I'm getting butter-milky in the ambition." 
 
 "Don't you like your bungalow?" 
 
 "Oh, yes! All except my own cooking." 
 
 This was a gruesome hint to throw at an unsuspect- 
 ing young woman. 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 91 
 
 "I wish we were your neighbors; you could come 
 and board with us," she responded. 
 
 She took the shock well. 
 
 " Clara," said I, in a fathomless voice, "if I were to 
 make a bonfire of all the derelict papers, broken boxes 
 and tin cans around this place, and if I were to drive 
 off the Saturnalian disarray on my desk, and if I 
 were to remove the brickbats that I have been using 
 for paperweights, and if I were to replace all the miss- 
 ing buttons on my coat, and if I were to dismantle my- 
 self of this blue flannel shirt, and attire myself like 
 a citizen of this glorious commonwealth, would you be 
 my wife?" 
 
 She picked a thorn from the bush. Had there been 
 a rose, she would have taken it instead. She after- 
 wards said she would rather have done so. However, 
 after this hesitation, she answered, "You might bring 
 about the change on a speculation." 
 
 In this age of cynicism, a man who is happily mar- 
 ried is almost justified in thinking he has discovered 
 matrimony; just as when they appeared in all their 
 lowly effulgence I fancied myself the first finder of 
 melons and strawberries and pumpkins. You who 
 have seen these products only in fruit stores and on 
 the table do not realize the great big pumpkin feeling 
 in the heart when beholding a large sunny pumpkin of 
 your own growing, solid on the earth and yellow- 
 gleaming through the tendrils and leaves. I felt like 
 telling all my friends to try this new amusement for 
 themselves wives and pumpkins. 
 
 The relationship of man and woman has admitted of 
 so many by-plots, clandestine compliments, moon- 
 light mysteries, ridiculous intrigues, that few of us 
 were inclined to revere the solemnization of these 
 comedies. We laughed at marriage because we were 
 
92 THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 
 
 afraid of it. It was not to be signified by a dove on 
 an angel's shoulder but its truth squawked by a par- 
 rot on a jester's arm. We have looked upon a man 
 who marries merely as one endowed with the right to 
 go through the joke for himself. Rather would we af- 
 ford for a woman a diamond bracelet than that most 
 expensive jewel in the world, a plain gold band. 
 
 Happiness is an accident; scarcely ever with pains- 
 taking reared. It is a flower that never was seen in 
 the bud. 
 
 I think I have an old-fashioned wife. She loves her. 
 home. I ttink she loves all that is in it, including her 
 husband. She has a thousand ways of saying so ; and 
 many ways of smiling it. I think I have discovered 
 love. I once opined I knew it a close and far; so 
 others. There was something misconstrued, though, 
 between its willow shades and its familiar realities. 
 The wondrous love comes like an unexpected frag- 
 rance to a man standing in an unknown road. Yet 
 it does not vanish like the momentary breeze but 
 magically and majestically takes the days from time, 
 that life seems too short for the shortest gratitude 
 amid its beauties. 
 
 "Grilsey," I said one evening when we had him at 
 dinner, "we have prepared for your special benefit this 
 bowl of carrots. Partake at once, as we will wait un- 
 til you have eaten them all." 
 
 "I don't see why you went to such great expense on 
 my account, ' ' he replied, well nigh overcome with emo- 
 tion. Of course, I used to bring you a few occasion- 
 ally, when you couldn't fool the farm into material- 
 izing them. But I did not expect to be repaid so 
 soon." 
 
 "Reporter!" I spoke dramatically "when you will 
 have been deposited in your last resting place, I shall 
 
THE MAN WHO WANTED A BUNGALOW 93 
 
 plant carrots in the lowly sod above you and at the 
 proper time bring around the cow, the bull and the 
 pig to root them up." 
 
 "Don't you believe him, Mr. Gilsey," interposed my 
 wife; "he does not mean a word he says." 
 
 "Indeed I do," I exclaimed. "Yet may I revoke 
 my stern decree on one condition; namely: that you 
 drink to the happiness of Two in a Bungalow." 
 
 Gilsey raised his glass and saluted us; then swal- 
 lowed the condition smoothly. After a prolonged 
 "ah," he added: 
 
 "Make that condition a life sentence." 
 
YB 13494 
 
 239430 
 
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