so would savor strongly of an application of the doctrine of personal
responsibility in the matter of a child with a club-foot. San Pasqual
isn't responsible. It has nothing to be proud of, nothing to incite
even a sporadic outburst of civic pride. It never had.

Here, in this story, occurs a description. In a narrative of human
emotions, descriptions are, perhaps, better appreciated when they are
dispensed with unless, as in the case of San Pasqual, they are worth
the time and space and trouble. Assuming, therefore, that San Pasqual,
for all its failings, is distinctive enough to warrant this, we will
describe the town as it appeared early in the present decade; and, for
that matter, will continue to appear, pending the day when they strike
oil in the desert and San Pasqual picks itself together, so to speak,
and begins to take an interest in life. Until then, however, as a
center of social, scenic, intellectual and commercial activity, San
Pasqual will never attract globe-trotters, folks with Pilgrim ancestors
or retired bankers from Kansas and Iowa seeking an attractive
investment in western real estate.

San Pasqual is such a weather-beaten, sad, abject little town that one
might readily experience surprise that the trains even condescend to
stop there. It squats in the sand a few miles south of Tehachapi pass,
hemmed in by mountain ranges ocher-tinted where near by, mellowed by
distance into gorgeous shades of turquoise and deep maroon. They are
very far away, these mountains, even though their outlines are so
distinct that they appear close at hand. The desert atmosphere has cast
a kindly spell upon them, softening their hellish perspective into
lines of beauty in certain lights. It is well that this is so, for it
helps to dispel an illusion of the imaginative and impressionable when
first they visit San Pasqual--the illusion that they are in prison.