The Heart Line by Gelett Burgess — Read

Two hours after leaving Granthope's studio, Mr. Gay P. Summer had / "dated" Fancy Gray. Mr. Summer was a "Native Son of the Golden West"; / he had, indeed, risen to the honorable station of Vice President of the / Fort Point Parlor of that ecstatic organization. He was, in his modest / way, a leader of men, and aspired to a corresponding mastery over women. / In all matters pertaining to the pursuit and conquest of the fair sex, / Mr. Summer was prompt, ingenious and determined. Before two weeks were / over he was able to boast, to his room-mate, of Fancy's subjection. / Fancy herself might equally well have boasted of his. At the end of this / time he was, at least, in possession of her photograph, six notes / written in a backward, slanting penmanship, twelve words to the damask / page, with the date spelled out, a lock of hair (though this was arrant / rape), and one gray suede, left-hand glove. These he displayed, as / trophies of the chase, upon the bureau of his bedroom and defended them, / forbye, from the asteistic comments of his room-mate, an unwilling and / unconfessed admirer of Gay P. Summer's power to charm and subdue.

In those two weeks much had been done that it is not possible to do / elsewhere than in the favored city by the Golden Gate. A Sunday / excursion to the beach was the fruit of his first telephonic / conversation. There are beaches in other places, indeed, but there is no / other Carville-by-the-Sea. This capricious suburb, founded upon the / shifting sands of "The Great Highway," as San Francisco's ocean / boulevard is named, is a little, freakish hamlet, whose dwellings -- one / could not seriously call them houses -- are built, for the most part, of / old street-cars. The architecture is of a new order, frivolously / inconsequent. According to the owner's fancy, the cars are placed side / by side or one atop the other, arranged every way, in fact, except / actually standing on end. From single cars, more or less adapted for / temporary occupancy, to whimsical residences, in which the car appears / only in rudimentary fragments, a suppressed motif suggested by rows of / windows or by sliding doors, the owners' taste and originality have had / wanton range. Balconies jut from roofs, piazzas inclose sides and / fronts, cars are welded together, dovetailed, mortised, added as ells at / right angles or used terminally as kitchens to otherwise normal / habitations.