As Mr. Robert Rushbrook, known to an imaginative press as the "Maecenas
of the Pacific Slope," drove up to his country seat, equally referred
to as a "palatial villa," he cast a quick but practical look at the
pillared pretensions of that enormous shell of wood and paint and
plaster. The statement, also a reportorial one, that its site, the
Canyon of Los Osos, "some three years ago was disturbed only by the
passing tread of bear and wild-cat," had lost some of its freshness as a
picturesque apology, and already successive improvements on the original
building seemingly cast the older part of the structure back to a hoary
antiquity. To many it stood as a symbol of everything Robert Rushbrook
did or had done--an improvement of all previous performances; it was
like his own life--an exciting though irritating state of transition to
something better. Yet the visible architectural result, as here shown,
was scarcely harmonious; indeed, some of his friends--and Maecenas had
many--professed to classify the various improvements by the successive
fortunate ventures in their owner's financial career, which had led
to new additions, under the names, of "The Comstock Lode Period," "The
Union Pacific Renaissance," "The Great Wheat Corner," and "Water Front
Gable Style," a humorous trifling that did not, however, prevent a few
who were artists from accepting Maecenas's liberal compensation for
their services in giving shape to those ideas.

Relinquishing to a groom his fast-trotting team, the second relay in his
two hours' drive from San Francisco, he leaped to the ground to meet the
architect, already awaiting his orders in the courtyard. With his eyes
still fixed upon the irregular building before him, he mingled his
greeting and his directions.

"Look here, Barker, we'll have a wing thrown out here, and a