Explore "One Chance in a Million" by H.D. Umbstaetter on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As the traveler, turning his back to the setting sun, descends into Paradise Valley, there spreads before him a brilliant checker-board of orchard and vineyard. Beyond this an extensive and picturesque group of red buildings gleams still ruddier, and upon one corner of the roof of the principal structure a small house of glass glistens like a huge jewel in the sunset glow. Approaching nearer, the buildings are seen to be surrounded by parks and gardens, where men and women are amusing themselves with golf and baseball, croquet and tennis, under the watchful eyes of discreet attendants.
Here is the home of many a human wreck, cast upon the shores of mental oblivion in the strenuous struggle of life -- the man who, during the gold fever of '49, found fortune to lose all else, he who sacrificed everything and gained nothing, and hundreds of others, men and women, who have proved unequal to the strain on nerve and brain imposed by the stress of an unkindly Fate.