MARK TWAIN

fruit for sale—delicious—loc buys pretty much anything
and in great quantity. Californians can't understand how
10 or 250 can buy a sumptuous lunch of coffee, eggs
and bread.

Vine-festooned terrace concealed hills like a web—
couldn't believe they were hills, except that upper trees
towered too high to be on the bank level.

Dark grottos, fairy harbors—tunnels, temples—
columns, pillars, towers, pilasters, terraces, pyramids,
mounds, domes, walls in endless confusion of vine-work—
no shape, no architecture, unimitated—and all so webbed
together with vines that short distances within arc only
gained by glimpses—monkeys here and there—birds
warbling—gorgeous-plumaged birds on the wing—para-
dise itself—the imperial realm of beauty, nothing to wish
for to make it perfect.

The changing vistas of the river—corners and points
folding backward, retreating and unveiling new wonders
beyond, of towering walls of verdure, gleaming cataracts
of vines—wonderful waterfalls of glittering leaves as
deftly overlapping each other as the scales of a fish—
a vast green wall—solid a moment, then as we advance
changing and opening into Gothic windows, colonnades—
all manner of quaint and charming shapes (damn the
blackguard with the damaged plug hat on who is looking
over my shoulder as I make these notes on the boiler
deck).

"Mrs. Grundy" (all in brown) damned old meddling,
moralizing fool—said I was no better than I ought
to be.

"The choir sang the damnedest, oldest, vilest songs, such
as 'Marching through Georgia,* 'When Johnnie comes
Marching Home,' 'Old Dog Tray,' cjust before the Battle
Mother/ etc. When they sang hymns they did well and

40