We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
Los Angeles — T^eal Estate
leaf apiece. Her fellow * tourists ' appeared to be mostly dismal and Fundamentalist farmers* widows longing to eke out their last years in the Californian sunshine. One woman was different. Tall, well dressed, and with an amused twinkle, she smiled to Jo and settled down with a notebook. They were lectured as they ate. A man with open, * you-may-alltrust-me ' eyes and a black coat of clerical and dependablelooking cut stood on the platform in their midst and began to talk, inscribing gradually mounting figures on the blackboard, with the evident hope that the apple-pie they were now munching would become inextricably mingled with the * apple-sauce ' he was offering, and the two would be digested together. Fabulous figures piled up before the eyes of those gaping women. Stories of successful speculators made them tingle with desire. The word ' success ' rouses the American as the trumpet-call revives the worn-out war-horse ; rendered susceptible in the highest degree to word-hypnotism by the advertisements dinned daily and weekly into their eyes, they are ever ready to respond. The mystic word * courage ' coupled with * success ' bears down their timidity ; for always the successful speculator has shown courage. Vision, opportunity, and faith all took their parts and flattered the humble ears of the victims. They had come to California expecting to find golden opportunities ; they had faith in large quantities ; and who is so dumb to imagination's appeal that she is not conscious within herself of the possession of vision ?
The lecture over, there was a rush for the door. Now they were to be led, or driven, to the fields of opportunity. Jo's conductor was evidently the least important, or the least pushing, which is the same thing : she had to wait till the last. The procession moved off headed by a Buick car, the chauffeur of which was a man with permanently waved hair, tortoiseshell spectacles, and an expensive English tweed
[59]