LOVE AND MUSHROOMS By FRANCES WILSON Van Mater, out on the coast for the melancholy purpose of witnessing what he conceived to be Corny Graham's crowning indiscretion-that is to say, his marriage-found himself lingering for the purpose of basking in California's smiles. The writing instinct, which in the little old town on Manhattan would keep his hand traveling back and forth across the paper for days at a stretch, here languished and drowsed like some heavy-eyed, faintly smiling lotus eater. He had, to be sure-in a spurt of energy that subsided almost as quickly as it came-begun a song to that sybaritic state, in which it was represented as a lady around whose neck hung A chain ablaze with diamond days All on the seasons strung, which he thought sounded rather well.