After a week of silence and inanition I hardly know where to take up this thread again. This veranda is not the best workshop in the world, particularly in such superb weather as this. The skies are enchantingly blue. The world is a dazzle of sunshine. Monadnock is closer to us than usual by several hundred yards. The vast extent of spreading valley is intensely green—the lakes as intensely blue. And there is a new horizon—a remoter one than we have known before, for beyond the mighty half-circle of hazy mountains that [begin page 109] formⒶtextual note the usual frame of the picture, rise certain shadowy great domes that are unfamiliar to our eyes. Certainly this house is nobly situated. It stands solitary, reserved, and well satisfied with itself, in the midst of its hundred or so of acres of grass and grove, and from this high throne looks out upon that spacious paradise of which I have been talking.

But there is a defect—only one, but it is a defect which almost entitles it to be spelled with a capital DⒶtextual note. This is the defect of loneliness. We have not a single neighbor, who is a neighbor. Nobody lives within two miles of us except Franklin MacVeaghⒺexplanatory note, and he is the furthest off of any, because he is in Europe. My social life has to be limited to the friends who come to me. I can’t very well go to them, because I don’t like driving, and I am much too indolent to walk. The rest of the household walk andⒶtextual note drive, daily, and thereby they survive. But I am not surviving. I am in a trance. When I have dictated a couple of hours in the forenoon I don’t know what to do with myself until ten o’clock next day. Sometimes the household are so melancholy that it ceases to be pathetic and becomes funny. Some member of it has given the house a MasonicⒶtextual note name, The Lodge of Sorrow.

I feel for Adam and Eve now, for I know how it was with them. I am existing, broken hearted, in a Garden of Eden, and in a household consisting of six or eight personsⒺexplanatory note—yet I feel as Alexander Selkirk felt, who had to cheer himself with sorrowful poetry because there was no other way to put in the time, and he said:

Adam would have said it. Adam would have written it and left it on record—if he could have spelled the words. The Garden of Eden I now know was an unendurable solitude. I know that the advent of the serpent was a welcome change—anything for society. I would have welcomed him. I would have done anything I could think of to make him comfortable and get him to stayⒶtextual note. He could have had all the apples, if I had to go without, myself.

I never rose to the full appreciation of the utter solitude of this place until a symbol of it—a compact and visible allegory of it—furnished me the lacking lift three days ago. I was standing alone on this veranda, in the late afternoon, mourning over the stillness, the far-spreading, beautiful desolation, and the absence of visible life, when a couple of shapely and graceful deer came sauntering across the groundsⒶtextual note and stopped, and at their leisure impudently looked me over, as if they had an idea of buying me as bric-à-bracⒶtextual note. Then they seemed to conclude that they could do betterⒶtextual note for less money, elsewhere, and they sauntered indolently away, and disappeared among the trees. It sizes up this solitude. It is so complete, so perfect, that even the wild animals are satisfied with it. Those dainty creatures were not in the least degree afraid of me.

There have been some large vacancies in this work of mine. Early in April came the great irruptionⒶtextual note of Vesuvius and electrified the world. After the lapse of perhaps a week, we began to get the elaborate particulars, along with photographs that made them [begin page 110] understandable. My first thought was,Ⓐtextual note “Here is a chance to show that old news is quite as interesting as fresh news, provided it shall come in the form of a narrative furnished by an eye-witness.” I thought I would get the account by the Younger Pliny of the overwhelming of Herculaneum and PompeiiⒺexplanatory note in a.d. 79 and put it in this book, where it would be, and remain, interesting,Ⓐtextual note as long as the book might last. But straightway the thing happened which I might have known would happen—the newspapers came out with the Younger Pliny’s narrative. It not only happened now, but it will happen again and again every time there is a great irruptionⒶtextual note of Vesuvius, so long as newspapers and magazines continue to exist, until Vesuvius shall go permanently dry—even though it be a hundred thousand years.

So there was no occasion to put the Younger Pliny into this book. He will always be heard from when the occasion comes, without need of help from me. I was dictating about other matters at the time, and trying hard to catch up to the current date. Therefore I allowed that irruptionⒶtextual note to wait until I could get a proper chance at it. But meantime I went on collecting and preserving, day after day, the daily accounts of the progress of the irruptionⒶtextual note, and, therewith, the pictures forwarded by eye-witnesses.

But before in my dictating I was able to catch up and begin on the irruptionⒶtextual note, came the mighty news of the obliteration of San Francisco by earthquake and fireⒺexplanatory note, and Vesuvius vanished instantly and completely from my interest and from the interest of the world. San Francisco filled the whole world, from horizon to horizon, and there was no more Vesuvius. Never in all history, I suppose, was a world-interestⒶtextual note so suddenly and so completely extinguished.

The first hint of the disaster which had befallen San Francisco reached me in such an extravagant form that I took it for an impudent invention, and it did not hold my attention ten minutes. It came to me by telephonic message from a friend down in the city. He simply said: “San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake at five o’clock this morning. Two thousand lives lost.” But by nightfall “extraⒶtextual note” after “extraⒶtextual note” began to appear and the news to take on the semblance of reality. Certain definite details were furnished. The next morning’s papers contained news of a convincing character—although there was not much of it, for the reason that the earthquake and the fire together had almost totally abolished railway and telegraphic communication with San Francisco from the outside.

I began to accumulate pictures and narratives again. I threw away all my Vesuvian accumulations to make room for the San Franciscan collections. But in a few days these had become a mountain, and the thing was hopeless. I destroyed my San Franciscan accumulations and stopped harvesting that kind of material. It occurred to me that there were certain good reasons why I could properly and wisely excuse myself from becoming a historian of that disaster. It happened to occur to me that inasmuch as this was the only instance in history of the destruction of a very great city by fire and earthquake, it would stand alone among disasters; conspicuous, awful, sublime, forever visible to men, forever unforgetable—and would so remain even if the aid of the book and the newspaper were denied it. However,Ⓐtextual note this aid would not be wanting. No, it will have that help for all time to come. A thousand years from now there will still be whole libraries about [begin page 111] the destruction of San Francisco. There will still be acres of pictures—photographic and authentic—illustrating the disaster. I recognize that I can quite safely leave San Francisco out of this book, and that is what I shall do.