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By Root 4241 0

tide that actually kicked up dust ahead of itself, and rolled over the dust and absorbed it in its thick wave. Twigs and weeds and grass and dirty foam rode the surface. The crowd raised a cheer-and indeed it was exciting to see the result of all our work actually flowing toward the dry earth. The Governor dug a hole beside the ditch and one of his aides set a Lombardy poplar in it, which another aid then watered with a bucket of mud dipped from the ditch. Eventually (it is all part of Oliver's dream) willows and Lombardies will line the Susan from the canyon mouth to its lower end, and bind its banks together with their roots, and drop their leaves on its current to spin in its slow whirlpools and snag on weeds and roots and make a resting place for darning needles and dragon-flies. By their living green presence along the line of the ditch they will be, he says, the truest testimony to the desert's fertility, and the beacon of hope to settlers and their families. This is all in that future when our grove will be tall and cool around our house, and when we will leave that coolness for a different coolness on the banks of the Big Ditch, under its line of sheltering trees, and watch the sunsets reflected in our man-made river sixty feet wide.

Within a few minutes the first dirt and trash was swept away, and the water came more cleanly, filling the ditch within eighteen inches of the top. There was much laughter and congratulations, and the Governor made a speech in which he particularly praised Oliver, and aired visions of the future far more grandiose (and based on far less knowledge of the limiting facts) than those of my engineers, who pride themselves on being realists with vision.

Later the party came to the Mesa for cakes and champagne, and some of the gentlemen, playing their game of the visionary future, made a pretense of walking the ladies in the grove. The sun soon ended their charade, for the trees are no higher than a lady's bonnet. But the Mesa did serve its function as show piece, and drew much admiration, especially our new lawn on the west side, which we keep green with the hose cart, and the rose garden, which is now beginning to bloom. What a joy those roses are, more than two dozen varieties, including everything from exotic hybrids such as the immaculately white Blanc Double de Coubert and the black-crimson Deuil de Paul Fontaine to such old favorites as the General Jacqueminot, which you remember from Milton, and the Marechal Niel. And on the piazza pillar our old Harison's yellow from the canyon, a hardy pioneer if there ever was one, a rose we have seen in every mining camp in the West.

It might have been a pleasant affair, for everyone was in high spirits, and it was a triumph for Oliver, and a fitting preliminary to the coming statehood celebration. But it was spoiled for me by the misery of my Belgian girl Sidonie, whom I hired this spring because of the floods of people we have had to feed and entertain. She was to have been married this summer, to a lawyer named Bradford Burns. He has been associated with the canal company as their "connection" man to the Land Office, was a delegate to the state convention, and has been appointed County Surveyor of this county. He is considerably above her in education and position.

Well, she went to town two weeks ago to see about the final arrangements, and met Burns accidentally in the street. They went to the house of a friend, and there on the piazza, the friend being away, he told her that he had changed his mind, that she wouldn't be up to her position as his wife. Imagine the poor thing coming home with this to be known by everybody! I had already arranged for another Chinese, a friend of Wan's, but Sidonie was so crushed I could not possibly let her go. She declares she will work for me all her life, and I more than half wish this cup would pass from me, for though she is good-natured and good, she is not a good servant.

Now imagine that on the day of the celebration, with Sidonie in her white apron passing cakes on the piazza and through the rooms,