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 weary of improving their minds with art and song, the whole white population goes camping up around Tahoe or hiking in the high Sierras or motoring down to Coronado or sword-fishing over at Catalina. Easterners and Midlanders who come here late in life easily get mixed up, they tell me, in these new religions, the way Cousin Ethelwyn did; but the real Californian doesn't take interest in the future life. The present is good enough for him. 'Wasn't it too bad,' I heard one of them say, 'that Saint John didn't see Santa Barbara before he wrote Revelation'! And Dorothy and I have sort of reasoned it out that the so-called decay of religion in our generation is rather complimentary to Providence, indicating that we haven't got such a grouch as some of those old boys had against the land that the Lord gave to our fathers."

"That is a discussible point of view," I admitted.

"But here," he said, "is where we turn off from the main road. It's only a little way now. You'll see, before you've been five minutes in Santo Espiritu, what a colony of aliens we are, practising our austerities in our august retreat on the outskirts of these careless worldlings."