Outspread below lies the oasis-city of the south, flat and vast as the great nomad camp it really is, its low roofs extending on all sides to a belt of blue palms ringed with desert.

All Hail, oasis grand!

When here, by the path of thy searching and sinning, Flows Life's gladsome stream, lies Love's oasis green? Come, turn thou and rest; know the end and beginning, The sought and the searcher, the seer and seen.

Men of all ages; men with foreign accent; men born and bred as farmers; men to whom the effect of indoor occupation clung; men still weak, but with red corpuscles singing a song of returning health in their arteriesstrapping, vigorous men, all with hands hardened by manual labor and in their eyes the far distances of the desert, in contrast to the sparkle of oasis intimacy.

The vision of this After-man or From-man is really about as helpful to us as the water of the oasis mirage is to the lost dying of thirst in the desert.

And once more Casey sent Juan to borrow the Oasis tub, and watered the goats and picked his way amongst the Smith offsprings and pretended to be deaf half of the time, and said he didn't know the other half.