Stevenson's "toll-house." It is, I believe, the most beautiful
country-seat on this round earth, and its free and gentle hospitality
cannot be surpassed. We left this delightful place of sojourning between
three and four o'clock in the morning to catch the early train from
Calistoga. Our steep climb up to the toll-house was under the broad
smile of the moon, which gradually gave way to the brilliant dawn. When
we passed the toll-house, the whole Napa Valley should have been
revealed to us, but it was not. The fog had surged through it and had
hidden it. What we saw was better than the beautiful Napa Valley. I
should like to tell what we saw, but I cannot, - "For what can the man
do who cometh after the king?"



[1] This exquisite little poem is unaccountably omitted from the
Household (and presumably complete) Edition of Sill's poems issued by
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1906. It is found in the little volume,
"Poems," by Edward Rowland Sill, published by the same firm at an
earlier date. Mountain View Cemetery is no longer a "little city."



The Sea Fogs



A change in the colour of the light usually called me in the morning. By
a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks in our western gable, where
the boards had shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as
stripes of dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that I used to