Returning to California escaping the siege of Warsaw, I found an apartment in Westwood, California, with by beloved second wife Joan. One of our immediate neighbors was this classic looking Japanese girl, named Lotus. She generously sat for me to draw her in carbon pencil. This drawing is much over life-size. It still intrigues me that I rarely see beautiful Chinese ladies, yet I very often meet with the beauty of Japanese ladies. I have found no answer for this, though I am inclined to think that the Chinese race evolved in greater hardships and heartbreaks than the Japanese. I am positive that heartbreaks destroy our good looks.

While putting this volume together, my most beloved Joan Lee Donovan Szukalski died (in tragic circumstances of which I will write in the second volume of the Troughful of Pearls). Once, in an outburst of utter despair over the remorseless finality of my love's departure, howling out my grief like a speared animal, I caught myself in a mirror and was struck by what had become of my face. I am sure that the face of the biblical Job was as much a frightening mass of hashed meat contained only by its skin. In my youth I was quite handsome, but my perpetual grief over the inhumanity of the pseudo-intellectual Poles has finally, irreversibly done its hateful duty in altering me into a face in the crowd.