The Eyes of the World | Page 6

peppers and
palms; while--towering above the loveliness of the valley and visible
now from the sweeping lines of their foothills to the gleaming white of
their lonely peaks--rises, in blue-veiled, cloud-flecked steeps and
purple shaded canyons, the beauty and grandeur of the mountains.
It was January. To those who had so recently left the winter lands, the
Southern California scene--so richly colored with its many shades of
living green, so warm in its golden sunlight--seemed a dream of
fairyland. It was as though that break in the mountain wall had ushered

them suddenly into another world--a world, strange, indeed, to eyes
accustomed to snow and ice and naked trees and leaden clouds.
Among the many little cities half concealed in the luxurious,
semi-tropical verdure of the wide valley at the foot of the mountains,
Fairlands--if you ask a citizen of that well-known mecca of the
tourist--is easily the Queen. As for that! all our Southern California
cities are set in wildernesses of beauty; all are in wide valleys; all are at
the foot of the mountains; all are meccas for tourists; each one--if you
ask a citizen--is the Queen. If you, perchance should question this
fact--write for our advertising literature.
Passengers on the Golden State Limited--as perhaps you know--do not
go direct to Fairlands. They change at Fairlands Junction. The little city,
itself, is set in the lap of the hills that form the southern side of the
valley, some three miles from the main line. It is as though this
particular "Queen" withdrew from the great highway traveled by the
vulgar herd--in the proud aloofness of her superior clay, sufficient unto
herself. The soil out of which Fairlands is made is much richer, it is
said, than the common dirt of her sister cities less than fifteen miles
distant. A difference of only a few feet in elevation seems, strangely, to
give her a much more rarefied air. Her proudest boast is that she has a
larger number of millionaires in proportion to her population than any
other city in the land.
It was these peculiar and well-known advantages of Fairlands that led
the young man of my story to select it as the starting point of his
worthy ambition. And Fairlands is a good place for one so richly
endowed with an inheritance that cannot be expressed in dollars to try
his strength. Given such a community, amid such surroundings, with a
man like the young man of my story, and something may be depended
upon to happen.
While the travelers from the East, bound for Fairlands, were waiting at
the Junction for the local train that would take them through the orange
groves to their journey's end, the young man noticed the woman of the
observation car platform with her two companions. And now, as he
paced to and fro, enjoying the exercise after the days of confinement in

the Pullman, he observed them with stimulated interest--they, too, were
going to Fairlands.
The man of the party, though certainly not old in years, was frightfully
aged by dissipation and disease. The gross, sensual mouth with its
loose-hanging lips; the blotched and clammy skin; the pale, watery
eyes with their inflamed rims and flabby pouches; the sunken chest,
skinny neck and limbs; and the thin rasping voice--all cried aloud the
shame of a misspent life. It was as clearly evident that he was a man of
wealth and, in the eyes of the world, of an enviable social rank.
As the young man passed and repassed them, where they stood under
the big pepper tree that shades the depot, the man--in his harsh, throaty
whisper, between spasms of coughing--was cursing the train service,
the country, the weather; and, apparently, whatever else he could think
of as being worthy or unworthy his impotent ill-temper. The shadowy
suggestion of womanhood--glancing toward the young man--was
saying, with affected giggles, "O papa, don't! Oh isn't it perfectly lovely!
O papa, don't! Do hush! What will people think?" This last variation of
his daughter's plaint must have given the man some satisfaction, at least,
for it furnished him another target for his pointless shafts; and he fairly
outdid himself in politely damning whoever might presume to think
anything at all of him; with the net result that two Mexicans, who were
loafing near enough to hear, grinned with admiring amusement. The
woman stood a little apart from the others. Coldly indifferent alike to
the man's cursing and coughing and to the daughter's ejaculations, she
appeared to be looking at the mountains. But the young man fancied
that, once or twice, as he faced about at the end of his beat, her eyes
were turned in his direction.
When the Fairlands train came in, the three found seats conveniently
turned, near the forward end of the