tight, the lure of the South Seas and the glamour of the Far East calls
us. I know just how it would be. Perhaps my spirit craves adventuring
the more for the years my body has had to spend in a chaise longue or
hammock, fighting my way out of a shadow. Anyway, I have heard the call,
but I have put cotton in my ears and am content that life allows me
three months out of the twelve of magic and my hill-top.

There is a town, of course--there has to be, else where would we post
our letters. It's as busy as a beehive with its clubs and model
playgrounds, its New Thought and its "Journal," but I don't have to be
of it. There are only so many hours in the day. I go around "in circles"
all winter; in summer I wish to invite my soul, and there isn't time for
both. I think I am regarded by the people in the village as a mixture of
recluse and curmudgeon, but who cares if they can live on a hill?

One flaw there was in the picture, and that is where the first
experiment in wheedling came in. A large telegraph pole on our property
line bisected the horizon like one of the parallels on a map. It seemed
to us at times to assume the proportions of the Washington Monument. I
firmly made up my mind to have it down if I did nothing else that
summer, and I succeeded, though I began in July and it was not till
October that it finally fell crushing into the sage brush, and for the
first time we saw the uninterrupted curve of beach melting into the pale
greenish cliffs beyond.

The property on which the pole stood belonged to a real-estate man. He
was pleasant and full of rosy dreams of a suburban villa resort, the gem
of the Pacific Coast. That part was easy. He and I together visited the
offices of the corporations owning the wires on that pole. As they had
no legal right of way they had to promise to remove it and many others,