94 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

strongholds and piously hew their kings in pieces
before the Lord has not yet appeared. Mean-
while the chosen people dwell precariously but
hopefully in the land. They know the Lord is
on their side.

For five weeks I have been travelling from one
to another of the sunlit, sea-washed cities strung
along the coast of this enchanted land. San
Diego, on the Mexican border with her Spanish
complexion; La Jolla, on whom the mountains
look and she on the sea; Los Angeles, with her
stunning noises and four hundred square miles of
city area to make them in; Long Beach with her
resplendent liquor ships anchored just outside
the twelve-mile limit; Passadena beautiful, slum-
less and scientific; Santa Barbara with her coat
of many colours and wine-dark eyes; Monterey
with a sedater loveliness; Palo Alto tall-timbered
and academic, and now San Francisco, where I
sometimes ask as I walk the streets (but not as
I look at the Bay), "What is the difference
between being here and being in New York ? "
and know not how to answer.

These have been my resting-places. And,
between them, penetrations of interiors and
h£nterlands3 ascents of mountains green and
barren, descents into fertile valleys where, strange
to say> no rivers flow, crossings of flower-carpeted
deserts, the colours soft, the light pure, the air
like the breathings of the Holy Ghost and a
thousand scenes so lovely to look on that one is