It was in "Casa Verde" that Stoddard preferred to do most of his visiting; and regardless of who called, he invariably gave what might be called a command performance. A single question would trigger a dramatic monologue that might go on for hours. With his den as a stage and his bric-a-brack as props, Stoddard slipped effortlessly into the role of a storytelling actor. His repertoire was vast; he could reenact scenes, complete with running commentary, that involved a variety of famous or notorious people from many parts of the world.
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George Wharton James recalled one such performance in an account of his first visit to Stoddard:
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 | | I climbed up the stairs to the room which his landlady had denoted to me, and knocked. Almost instantly he opened it, and without a word placed one arm around me, taking my right hand in his, and drew me to him into the room, and kissed me, while tears rolled down his cheeks. His desk stood in a square "bay," with windows on three sides, and still without speaking, he gently led me behind the desk, pushed the curtains aside and began to talk. And for fully half an hour I stood there, silent, listening to one of the sweetest, most poetic, pathetic, tender pourings out of heart I have ever heard.
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After Stoddard had exhausted himself on the subject of living in Monterey, James asked him a question about Mark Twain, whose autobiography was then running serially in the
North American Review.
Twain had written of his days with Stoddard in London, suggesting that his secretary-companion had not been awake very often. "That's very funny," Stoddard said, proceeding to tell James his side of the story at great length.
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At night Stoddard often repeated such stories to himself in bed, as a means of quieting his nerves and easing himself to sleep.
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During the Monterey years, much of Stoddard's "visiting" was done by correspondence, to which he often devoted many hours a day. Magazine articles came first in his writing schedule, but after 1907 there were fewer and fewer of these to be written.
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During an average month he wrote about a hundred letters, nearly all of them in the purple ink that had become his trademark; and he would mail them in envelopes bearing the initials "S. A. G." (Saint Anthony, Guide). To Ina Coolbrith, Stoddard gossiped that Joaquin was planning to run for a Senate seat in Oregon, and that, if he only had a ''Kid," he would not mind moving into an empty cottage at "The Hights." To Robert Ballard of London, with whom he had spent one night in Honolulu in 1882, Stoddard complained that the West Coast was too strenuous, that he felt lost, and
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