From Hell Gate now to Golden Gate there are only miles, and any machine makes a mere holiday of the trip.
A young acquaintance of mine has just made the coast-to-coast run, driving her own car. She said to me on arriving here that “it was an awful monotonous journey.” Didn’t anything happen? I asked with considerable surprise. No, nothing happened. Didn’t she see anything of interest? Wasn’t there any excitement? Didn’t she have any adventures? No, she didn’t see anything; she didn’t get a bit of excitement out of it; there wasn’t any adventure; just one blinkety-blank mile after another!
“Incredible!” I cried.
“Oh, yes,” she said, her eyes brightening, something like a thrill in her voice, “I did have three punctures!”
All the way from Golden Gate to Hell Gate with three punctures to break the cushioned tenor of her way. This is what life has come to.
Then she said: “There were two things on the trip that did greatly interest me. But I don’t exactly know why; and I am afraid to tell you about them for fear you will think me such a big fool.”
“No,” I answered, “I won’t think you any bigger fool than I do now, so what were the two interesting things?”
“Well,” she began (and I wish the reader would note the strictly American touch in this description), “one of them was Luther Burbank’s spineless cactus.” (Notice, I say, the spineless quality of this cactus.)
The girl read my face and exclaimed, much hurt: “There! I knew you would poke fun at me.”
“But tell what the other thing was,” I begged. “Let’s get the sordid story over as fast as we can.”