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182 that he ran his theory, instead of following the usual custom, and allowing his theory to run him. Most people are run by their theories, and fail. Having never been able to sell my theories to others, and being determined not to buy any, or keep any on hand, I have retired from the theory business entirely, and do not propose to go back to it.

The road leading up to the Petrified Forest from Calistoga is a romantic and beautiful one, and the trip on a pleasant morning or evening in the early springtime, when the hills are clad in vivid green, and the manzanita and the madrono are in blossom, loading all the air with their sensuous fragrance, is one to be enjoyed to the utmost, and ever after remembered with pleasure.

Beautiful for aye to me are the stars which look down in their glory on this valley and these mountains; more fragrant than the winds from the sweet south, which have passed over "the Gardens of Gul in their bloom," are the soft breezes which I have here breathed with a tender joy unutterable. A two- mile ride through the fertile valley takes one to the foot of Mount St. Helena, and a winding carriage-road, supplemented by a bridle-path, leads thence to the summit of the grand old mountain. The tourists who every summer are whirled through this valley up to the Geysers and back again in hot haste, vainly imagining that they are seeing, when they