Chapter VIII: Part 8

This is a famous wine country. We visited the tunnels of the “Santa Cruz Mountain Wine Company,” whose vineyards are visible nine miles away on the hills. The tunnels are dug out of the soft, sand-stone rock and are dark and rather cool. That is to say, the air seemed cool when compared with the atmosphere outside, but as a matter of truth, which is often stranger than fiction, the thermometer showed the temperature in the tunnels to be 52 degrees, and it remains at about that figure all the year round. There are three such tunnels, each 380 feet long, 24 feet wide, and 18 feet high. The vineyards of the company include two hundred acres.

In these deep, cool tunnels the company has stored in great vats no less than two hundred thousand gallons of wine. Bottle after bottle was opened for our party and so cheaply was it held that the glasses were freely washed with the wine as the different kinds were tasted--port, sherries, clarets and white wines.

The claret has good body, and if you add a little water to it, as the French treat _vin ordinaire_, it makes a very good drink for a thirsty soul at the dinner table.

California Angelica has been a popular wine for twenty odd years: the Angelica produced in Santa Cruz is sweet, smooth, oily and delicious.

A brand of Sauterne so pleased my palate that I ordered twenty gallons to be shipped to New York. But I’ll let you into the secret of this seemingly extravagant order; the price is only one dollar per gallon--and not Jones, but I, paid the freight. In ordering this wine I was guided first, by my own taste--it has delicious flavor; secondly, I felt assured that it was absolutely pure. The grapes are here, on the spot, ship loads of them, in the season, and there’s no incentive for adulteration.

The well-kept roads and fine drives about Santa Cruz are not its least attractive feature. One of them you can take from the shore, driving over a bridge of the San Lorenzo river, passing Phelan Park and the twin lakes, on the borders of which are the summer home and settlement of the Christian Church. You keep the mountains in view all the way, and a turn here or there shows you the city, the bay, or the ocean.

The three-mile cliff drive takes you immediately above the rock-bound shore of the Pacific, where you see giant crags upon which the everlasting waves have had their effect. Some of the rocks stand off from the shore twenty and fifty feet, and through these the powerful waves have worked great holes, through which the waters rush with a tumultuous roar, dashing their spray far above. These “natural bridges” would be considered a rare sight if they were the only feature of this scene, and would attract people from a distance, but where there is so much to admire and astonish, they are only one among the many marvels that here make an embarrassment of pictorial riches.

The city has two banks, good public schools and water-works; it is sewered to the ocean, it has horse-cars, fine public buildings, and two flourishing newspapers, the _Sentinal_ and the _Surf_. Good society is not lacking, and beautiful homes abound. Duncan McPherson has a fine Gothic villa; the residence of Mayor Bowman commands beautiful views of the bay and the town; the home of William Kerr, two miles out of the city, is a handsome structure in the Queen Anne style, having two wide entrances and bay windows, affording extensive views of the valley and bay. Colonel A. J. Hinds, a pioneer of Santa Cruz, has built himself a charming home, and Mrs. P. B. Fagen’s house on Mission street, one of the principal residential streets, attracts the attention of all passers-by. Other pretty homes are those of D. K. Abeel, R. Bernheim, Mr. Glover and Mrs. E. J. Green.

Mr. J. Philip Smith, a New York capitalist, who has travelled far and wide and who passes much of his time in Europe and New York, came here with his family four years ago, bought a two-acre site upon which a fine house stood and this he enlarged and reconstructed, laying out the grounds in a tasteful way, making it one of the handsomest residences in Santa Cruz. It has a high and enviable position near the Sea Beach Hotel.

It reminds you at once upon entering it of a Parisian interior and on closer examination you are not surprised to learn that many of the things of beauty which adorn the rooms had a French origin. The Smiths are great travellers and in their journeyings about the world have “picked up” any number of art works and curios which now find an appropriate resting place.

One of the finest views here, one of the most beautiful of its kind in the State probably, is to be had from Logan Heights, the estate of Judge J. H. Logan. Judge Logan is president of the Santa Cruz bank and one of the most esteemed citizens of this section. The house, not imposing architecturally, stands on a mesa or plateau of about twenty acres, in which beautiful roses and other choice flowers bloom the year round. From this elevated position a series of bird’s-eye views are spread out before you, the extent, beauty and variety of which are not easily described.

At this point you are two hundred feet above the Pacific ocean. Immediately below, in the foreground, is the whole city of Santa Cruz, with its high school, its gardens, reservoirs, depots, hotels, and its church spires. To your left, eastward, are the villages Soquel and Aptos, famous lumber centres. A few miles further off in the same direction, glistens Monterey bay, backed by the Santa Cruz mountains.

Southward, beyond the city at your feet, winds the bay of Monterey. Look twenty miles further south, and, in this clear atmosphere, you see the sleepy old town of Monterey with the mountains as a background for the picture.

To your right, westward, is the ocean again--altogether, forming a number of diversified and beautiful pictures.

There are a number of good hotels at Santa Cruz--the Pacific Ocean House, the Wilkins House and Ocean Villa. The last named looks cozy and comfortable as it stands in its own pretty garden, with a commanding view. The leading house is that owned by D. K. Abeel, the Sea Beach House, which he has recently enlarged and reconstructed, putting in all the modern improvements, and putting in as landlord John T. Sullivan, who, after securing a long lease, furnished it in good style. It was designed by G. W. Page, a prominent architect of San José, and presents a most pleasing appearance, viewed either from the heights or from the shore, above which it stands nearly one hundred feet, and to which its grounds, beautifully terraced and ornamented with flowers, gracefully slope. “Modern improvements,” of course--every room in the Sea Beach Hotel has running water, but the improvements include hot water also.

The parlor is on the main floor, in the corner round tower of the building, and, with its many windows, is uncommonly pleasing. Through or from these windows you get the best features of the scenery hereabouts, from the tasteful flower gardens of the hotel grounds to Loma Prieta and the mountains in the distance, or to Monterey, beyond the bay in the foreground.

The lessee, Mr. Sullivan, is not unknown to New York. He was a tried friend of Horace Greeley’s and a trusted officer under Hon. Thomas L. James in the New York Post-office, in which place he rose after faithful service of fifteen years to be superintendent of the newspaper department. Mr. Sullivan has been in Santa Cruz only five or six years. I saw a modest little two-story building in which he started here, “keeping boarders,” and he now finds himself in the leading hotel of the town, owning his own furniture, a fine stable, and with the prospect of making his fortune. With success Mr. Sullivan has made many staunch friends, among them the mayor of the town, judges, bank presidents and other leading citizens.

The steamship landing is nearer the Sea Beach Hotel than it is to any other house; the broad guage station is at the door, so to speak, and the narrow guage station is two minutes walk around the corner. The house is open all the year. Santa Cruz is attractive in winter, but in summer it must be delightful.

REDONDO BEACH.

REDONDO BEACH, CAL., March 13, 1891.

New Orleans obtained its sub-title from the crescent shape of its banks on the Mississippi river. The trend of the Pacific shore here suggested the pretty name, “Redondo,” in Spanish, signifying round.

It is midway between Capistrano, south, and Point Duma, north, and is sixteen miles in a southwest direction from Los Angeles, from which city there are several trains daily over two roads--the Santa Fé and the new Redondo Beach railroad. All passenger steamers to and from San Francisco and way points stop at Redondo.

Three years ago Redondo was a waste, or at best it was a cattle ranch. There was not a house nor a hut here, now it is a garden spot of Southern California. It came into existence as if by magic, as do many flourishing towns on the Pacific slope.

Beautifully situated on grounds rising gradually from the ocean, backed by rich, tillable lands and ranges of green hills, with seaport facilities not surpassed in California south of San Francisco, its rapid growth is not surprising.

The creation of Redondo, according to plans which promise such a satisfactory result, is due to Californians--men of irrepressible energy and wide experience in large affairs--Captain J. C. Ainsworth, Captain R. R. Thompson and Captain George J. Ainsworth, not captains by courtesy, either. They planned and have established successfully railroad and steamship lines in Oregon and the northwest.

That they have ample capital at their command may be judged by a few figures given at random. Their first step was to buy one thousand acres of land; second, to build a railroad and wharf; third, to secure an ocean front of _one mile_, then to erect a hotel four hundred and fifty feet long to accommodate three hundred people. It was first opened May 1, 1890.

In the hotel they built a music room, 48 × 80 feet, spending two thousand dollars simply on an inlaid floor; there is a tennis court which cost seven thousand dollars; they laid a Portland cement walk from the station to hotel, sixteen feet wide and a quarter of a mile long, expending another ten thousand in that way--altogether it is easy to believe that checks for more than a million have been drawn in the enterprise. These Californians, with their big trees and their forty-thousand-acre ranches, do nothing in a small way.

Do you ask what are the natural attractions of the place? “First, last and all the time,” there is the almost wonderful climate--genial, balmy and equable, such as you will find nowhere but in Southern California. The hotel proprietor tells me that the average winter temperature is 61 degrees. In case you should not care for figures at second hand, here is a record from my own thermometer. Yesterday, March 12, noon, 68, this morning at seven it registered 53; at this writing, eight P.M., 60, the instrument hanging outside my window.

The summer here, I am assured, and I firmly believe, is more delightful than the winter, and the hotel will be kept open the year round. Like the Hygeia at Old Point Comfort, Redondo attracts people from a distance in winter; in summer it is largely patronized by residents of San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities of the State.

I do not agree entirely with Mrs. Malaprop that “comparisons are odorous.” They often serve a very useful purpose in illustration. At any rate I am given to the habit of comparing, be it a good or a bad habit. What is large or small, fine or coarse, hot or cold, wet or dry, good or bad, except by comparison?

For once, however, I am put to my wits’ ends for comparison. Redondo is like no place on the Atlantic coast, because, although directly on the seashore, every foot of ground, almost up to the edge of the ocean, is covered with fine grass; and the most tender flowers grow and flourish in profusion everywhere, almost within a few feet of the surf. This in winter, mind you--a Southern California winter, though. It is not so, even in summer, on the Atlantic coast, in the United States, nor in England. Yes, I have it: I can indulge in the old habit; the climate of Redondo is like that in the South of France: in fact it is in the same latitude: there!

In the hotel nurseries, which are distant from the surf but a few hundred feet, you may revel in roses, heliotrope, tulips, mignonette, daisies, etc. There are tall calla lilies in plenty and the pleasing sight of acres and acres of pinks of various colors is one that is very fascinating. The hotel farm of two hundred acres, where choice stock is kept, supplies the house with more than all the milk, cream, butter, fruit and vegetables it requires.

The hotel is only four stories high, yet there is an elevator; of course electric lights and all modern improvements. Neither is the building deep, but it has great length, to give views of ocean in front and of green hills in the rear. It stands north and south thus affording ocean views from three sides. Of the 225 rooms, every one has a sunny exposure at some hour of the day; every one is well ventilated and lighted; every one is an “outside room,” and every guest feels that his is the best suite in the house.

The porch is not one straight, unbroken line like the porches of so many summer hotels in the east. It has a few graceful curves in it and from it you may watch the craft sailing by--coast steamers to and from San Francisco and other ports. The golden sunsets you may see from this porch are such as no artist could represent. It is not within the possibilities of paint and canvas to reproduce such gorgeous scenes. On a clear day without the aid of a glass Catalina island is visible thirty miles away.

The dining-room of the hotel juts out in a northerly direction and has windows on three sides. From a distance it looks as if it might have been an after-thought in construction, but the architect planned it this way, to give what was most desired--light, ventilation and pleasing views, and he succeeded.

Two hundred and sixty can sit down to dinner at one time.

There are no loose wardrobes nor clothes presses; all the bedrooms have closets built in the walls. Every room is supplied with hot and cold water running into marble basins. Every room has a tiled fireplace in color and design to match the carpet, and what is also worthy of mention, the furniture in the bedrooms is not duplicated, nor are the carpets.

The drinking water is from an Artesian well. It has been analyzed and pronounced pure. The plumbing seems to have been done in a careful manner, and the question of sewerage need give nobody concern. The hotel stands on a _mesa_. The refuse goes through an iron pipe and empties into the sea half a mile from the house.

There are no better fishing grounds on the coast, so they say. If you are lucky with the line you may catch bonita, Spanish mackerel, baracouta, smelt and yellow tails, whatever they are.

The circular of the Redondo Hotel as to rates merely says, “same as any first-class hotel.” This is hardly in accordance with the facts, as I see them. The terms at the Redondo are from three to four dollars per day, while hotels in the east, of the same class, charge from four to five dollars. Why such low rates obtain in California hotels is something I intend to find out before I leave the State. For illustrated circulars address Redondo Hotel Co., Redondo Beach, Cal.

PASADENA.

PASADENA, March 10.

People who care more for comfort than for great “style,” who prefer a quiet, home-like, family house to one of noise and bustle, those who are seeking health, pure air and out-door life with grand views rather than the music, dancing and entertainments of a fashionable hotel may jot down as a memorandum “The Painter Hotel, at Pasadena, Cal,” thirty-five minutes by train from Los Angeles and fifteen minutes by “free ’bus” from passenger station.

It is a new house, was built in ’88; it accommodates seventy-five boarders, and is owned and kept by J. H. Painter’s Sons. The house is airy, the bedrooms are comfortably (not luxuriously) furnished, the parlor is pleasant, the class of guests select, the table is well provided, and at once, let me say, ere the important fact escapes me, the rates are remarkably low for the nice appointments and good fare supplied--only $2.50 per day for transient guests, and from $12.50 to $17.50 per week to season boarders, for people come to stay for a month or so--some spend the whole winter here. The house is open the year round, it being pleasant in summer as well as in winter. It is a mountainous district, and the ocean, from which come soft winds in summer, is only thirty minutes’ distant in a south and southwesterly direction.

Yes, and here are two more facts--Pasadena is one thousand feet above the sea, and the Painter Hotel, which is one and a half miles from the centre of the town, stands on the highest point hereabouts.

The grounds comprised in the property include ten acres, upon which the owners grow their own fruits for the table--peaches, apricots, raisins, prunes, etc.

Do you want to visit the town? Street cars pass the door of the Painter. And if you want a view it will “pay” you to climb up to the roof of the hotel, where there is an observatory. Three miles off is the Raymond Hotel, plain to your view in this clear atmosphere. On one side is the San Bernardino range of mountains, on the other the Sierra Madre range. You may see San Jacinto, ninety miles away, also Wilson’s Peak, upon which the new observatory, with its powerful lens, is to be placed; and beautiful San Gabriel valley is spread out immediately beneath you, a feature of which, at this writing, are acres of large, orange-hued poppies, so bright that you could almost imagine them aflame, especially if the wind is blowing, thus giving vibration to the thin, delicate leaves.

The drives are a most delightful feature:--to the city proper, with its wide avenues of beautiful residences, to San Gabriel mission, and to “Lucky” Baldwin’s ranch, a pleasant afternoon drive.

Those who are planning a winter or spring tour will thank me for suggesting a visit to the Painter House, but if people demand “style,” if they would dance to orchestral music; if they demand great size in a dining-room and grandeur in the drawing-room, and they are willing to pay for it, all these are also obtainable here, or rather at East Pasadena, which is only three miles distant; eight miles from Los Angeles. And the price, $4.50 per day, $21 to $28 per week, is reasonable considering what you get for the money.

Reference is made to the great Raymond Hotel, which was built in 1886, where they have a bar, as well as billiards and bowling; elevator, electric lights, a reception-room, music-room, grand parlor, and a dining-room which accommodates three hundred persons. From your seat at table you see “Old Baldy” looming above the clouds eleven thousand feet and snow-covered ten months out of the twelve, looking like a great sugar-loaf and recalling the Jungfrau, near Interlaken, Switzerland.

Like the dining-room of its modest neighbor, the Painter Hotel, every table in the Raymond is decorated daily with fresh flowers plucked from the hotel grounds--this is “winter,” mind you. The grounds of the Raymond cover a space of fifty-four acres, so there is no lack of fruit (oranges, lemons, etc.), to say nothing of the roses, blue bells, honeysuckle, dandelions, heliotropes and violets which may be picked _ad libitum_--if you don’t regard the painted signs.

A view from one of the Raymond’s verandas is not much unlike that from the front steps of the Grand Hotel in the Catskills, only the former is far more extensive.

The proprietor of the Raymond is W. Raymond, of Raymond’s Vacation Excursions, Boston, and the manager is C. H. Merrill, of the Crawford House, in the White Mountains. The post-office address is East Pasadena, Cal.

Orange Grove avenue and Marengo avenue and the paths in the grounds leading to the houses are lined with luxurious fan palm trees, interspersed with great cacti and not a few century plants, which it is proven here bloom much oftener than once in a hundred years. The calla lily, that delicate plant which is so tenderly cared for in the East that the flower is wrapped in cotton wool, here grows in such profusion that it is used for hedges. You will see fields of “callas” at Pasadena, raised for shipment to large cities. The whole of Pasadena is like one immense garden, a garden city indeed.

PASADENA COTTAGES.--You would scarcely credit it, so I won’t tell you, that some of the “cottages” in this new place are as large and elaborate as those on the New Jersey coast, between Seabright and Elberon, and some of them would not look out of place alongside the grand Newport “cottages.”

Mr. Kernaghan, editor of the _Pasadena Star_, has a fine home here. One of the prettiest places belongs to and is occupied by Mrs. Kimball, the widowed daughter of Rufus Hatch of New York.

Charles Frederick Holder, formerly of New York, came out here six years ago for his health, and having obtained it has made this his home. He has a cozy cottage on Orange Grove avenue in which is his study, where you may find him at his ease, wearing a short black velvet coat or smoking jacket.

Mr. Holder is a journalist and littérateur, a frequent contributor to current magazines and leading newspapers. He has published two or three brochures on Pasadena. One of his contributions concerning this section was an illustrated article which appeared in _Harper’s Weekly_. It was entitled “The Rose Tournament,” and described a beautiful ceremony which takes place here annually, on New Year’s day. Mr. Holder’s style is finished and scholarly and his language choice, with no waste of words. Being a man of cultivated taste, with a rare poetic fancy, he is at home here, when treating of this lovely country with its wealth of fruits and flowers.

Among others who have built houses and who occupy country seats at Pasadena is Governor Markham, of California. A Mr. Nelmes has a lovely ten-acre place, and with it a generous heart. A sign placed conspicuously outside his gates reads as follows: “All are welcome to drive through these private grounds and groves. Eastern tourists are each invited to pluck one orange.”

Near the Painter Hotel are many beautiful homes owned by “Eastern people.” One is owned by Dr. Green, of Woodbury, N. J., another luxurious place is that of Mr. McNally, of the publishing house in Chicago of Rand, McNally & Co.

Professor Low, of Norristown, Pa; J. W. Scoville, a Chicago banker, and E. T. Hurlburt, a capitalist of Chicago, are owners of fine estates, and of less notable places there are owners in Pasadena by the hundred.

It strikes you as rather odd to find winter and summer together, hand in hand as it were. At your feet flowers; raise your head and snow on the mountain peaks is visible to the naked eye.

The one-horse cars which ply between Pasadena and East Pasadena, California, like some of the one-horse cars of some other cities, have a driver who acts as conductor also, but the driver in the Pasadena cars serves as collector as well. There is no automatical nor mechanical contrivance to receive the fares, nor is there any way of recording them. When a passenger gets on the driver leaves the front platform, and, letting the horse take care of himself, or handing the reins to a front-platform passenger, he runs back and collects the new fare. There are not many cars on the line--one starts only every half hour--and as most of the passengers are through passengers, and few get on or off between the two points named, the animal being very docile, there is no difficulty in one man doing the whole work. The driver getting on and off his car reminds me of the elevator in Philp’s Hotel, Glasgow, which will not budge upward if there are as many as four or five people in the car. The man who runs it gives the rope a pull, on the ground floor, then leaves the car, walks up the stairs, getting up to the second or third flight in ample time to give the rope another pull and to let the passengers out.

Some people talk of the winter months in California as “the rainy season.” This may be an old story, told of what was the case years ago. It certainly is not true to-day. Examining the records, I find that from January 5 to February 1 of this year there was no rain at all in Pasadena, and in all of that time there were but two cloudy days--January 23 and January 28.

I have been in Southern California now for about three weeks and have seen it rain only on two days and one night--two days in Los Angeles and one night, for one hour, at Coronado Beach.

I don’t advise you to throw away your umbrella, as did a tourist from Colorado when coming here, but my experience would show that there is very little use for such an article in Southern California, even in what used to be called “the rainy season.”

LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES, March 17.

If you are going from Los Angeles to San Diego, or vice versa, don’t go by boat unless you have a great affection for the sea. First, you must change at San Pedro, from cars to boat; second, the waterway occupies much more time; but what is most important, if you go by rail, over the Sante Fé route, you get magnificent and diversified views of the ocean, close views of foot hills and distant views of snow-capped mountains. You pass through a fertile country, see picturesque cottages, large sheep and cattle ranches, and great rifts in the mountains that make you smile when you think of “gaps” in the east, which are so widely advertised. The train skirts the edge of the sea for scores of miles and recalls similar scenic features of land and water which you admire in travelling from Aberdeen to Ballater over the “Great North of Scotland Railway,” a pretty little road with a big sounding name. If you should have to stop on a switch, or for a “heated journal,” for five or ten minutes, you can step off the car platform and in a few minutes you can gather a large bouquet of sweet, wild flowers, among them fragrant “mignonette” as they call it here. Southern California might well be named the land of flowers, and this branch of the Sante Fé is entitled to be called by that much abused term, picturesque.

FLORIDA ORANGES “BEATEN.”--I wrote last season about some Florida oranges which Mr. Orvis showed me at the Windsor Hotel, Jacksonville. The largest of them, if I remember aright, measured thirteen inches in circumference and weighed twenty-three ounces. I asked, “who can beat these?” They are “beaten.” This morning I weighed an orange in Los Angeles which turned the beam at thirty-three ounces and which measured nineteen and one-quarter inches. This particular orange was light for its size, because it was not quite ripe nor “full” when picked. It came from George Bunce’s grove (pray do not print this “grave”) at Rivera, a small town nine miles from Los Angeles. The grove was only set out in 1888. All the oranges on the tree from which this one was picked were as large and as heavy as the one described, but there were only three of them.

All the ticket brokers’ offices, all the fruit stores, segar shops and all the shops of small traders and of places patronized by men have their doors and windows thrown open during business hours. No “protection” from the weather is needed. It is never cold enough for closed doors or windows in the daytime. Nor are some of these places of business closed even at night except by strong iron-wire netting covering the fronts of the stores. This open feature strikes a visitor as very strange at first, but one soon becomes accustomed to it. All through the winter open street cars are used.

Three years ago, when the Los Angeles boom was at its height, the foundation was laid near Main street for what was intended to be the largest hotel in the United States. There it stood and there it stands to-day (the foundation), the bricks appearing just one foot above the ground level. These bricks enclose a space of two acres. Pullman, of sleeping-car fame, was one of those interested, and he says that the idea has not been entirely abandoned. The idea may yet exist but the open lots and the brick foundation look very lonesome. Meanwhile Mr. O. T. Johnson erected a very handsome hotel, The Westminster, on the corner of Main and Fourth streets, which will accommodate two hundred and fifty guests. The site of the Westminster is choice; the house contains all the modern improvements; it is well furnished and well patronized.

As I write, in my bedroom of the Westminster Hotel, looking north I can see, without rising from my seat, great high mountains covered with snow. They present a most beautiful picture in this clear atmosphere, with the sun shining upon them.

That “cranky critic,” as the New York _Hotel Gazette_ calls Max O’Rell, would be suited at the Westminster Hotel. O’Rell complains because in American hotels guests have regular seats; that each person upon entering the dining-room is not allowed to sit just where he pleases. The contrary is the rule in the hotel mentioned. A notice is prominently posted near the elevator which reads: “Positively no seats reserved in the dining-room.” The waiters are young, intelligent American girls of a good class, some from New York and some from Nebraska, all uniformed in white. They look neat and clean, are alert to take an order and quick in serving it.

Strawberry short-cake was part of the dessert at to-day’s luncheon in the Hotel Westminster. Fresh-picked strawberries are served every morning for breakfast. Not a dozen or two small, hard berries, such as I have seen served for a “portion” at hotel tables in Florida during February, but a saucerful for each guest of large, ripe berries that have a delicious flavor. Strawberry ice-cream was on the dinner menu--the cream made, not from “strawberry flavoring,” but of the honest fruit. Fresh peas and Lima beans figure on the bill, also oranges in profusion, picked from the groves hard by.

All the way between New Orleans, La., and Los Angeles, Cal., on the Southern Pacific railroad, you pay five to ten cents each for oranges; as soon as you reach Los Angeles, boys with baskets of the golden fruit swarm about the cars crying out, “Oranges, three for a nickel, six for a dime.” If you have a little patience you will hear, “Oranges, eight for a dime,” and if you wait till the train is about to start you can get ten for a dime. Possibly after you are out of hearing they are sold at ten cents a dozen.

In the cars of the Southern Pacific railroad that run between Los Angeles and the seaport town of San Pedro appears this printed notice: “WARNING:--Passengers are hereby warned against playing games of chance with strangers, of betting on three card monte, strap, or other games. You will surely be robbed if you do.”

THE CALIFORNIA.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 1, 1891.

California being one of the largest of these United States, the Californians thought that their chief city should have large hotels, so they built in San Francisco the Baldwin House, the Lick House, the Occidental and larger than any of these, the Palace Hotel, “larger than any hotel in existence,” it is claimed. Whether this claim is well founded or not, the Palace is large enough to suit the most extravagant American ideas. It occupies three acres of ground. It has seven hundred and fifty-five bedrooms; number of rooms all told, ten hundred and fifteen.

But with the growth of the State and the growth of culture and good taste, Californians and tourists from other States demanded something above and beyond mere size; and so a few months ago was erected “The California.” There are several “California Hotels” in San Francisco, in fact, an old house directly opposite the California now calls itself “The New California,” probably because the name is new. So many houses with names near alike give trouble to the Post-office people, but the title of the house of which I write is simply “The California.”

It is in a central and accessible part of the city--in Bush street, just off Kearney street, which runs nearly parallel with Market, being not far from the _Chronicle_ building, which with its great clock tower running up hundreds of feet in the air, serves as a finger or sign-post from many parts of the city.

The front is of cedar-colored sandstone, and with its modern, low-arched entrances and high, round towers, is uncommonly pleasing to the eye. There are one hundred and forty rooms in the house, and it is nine stories high, the higher floors being most desirable. The light is better as you ascend, and the views from the windows across the bay and the Golden Gate are a constant delight. From my bedroom window I can plainly see the graceful movements of the white squadron, which, with the green hills in the far distance make a magnificent picture. The California was erected by “an estate,” and the estate considered not the expense. They started out with the idea to build a hotel as near perfection as possible, and they succeeded.

Every known precaution is taken against fire. It was the intention from the first to build a house as proof against fire as men, money and materials could make it. Scientists were consulted as to sanitation and plumbing, and to these points special thought and attention were given, Such luxurious fittings in marble and silver plate I have never seen surpassed, if equalled; not even in my recent ten-thousand-mile tour through the South and West, and I have visited hotels that cost all the way from one to three millions of dollars.

Instead of marble and brass, which are used so freely in large American hotels, rare and beautiful woods prevail in decorating the interior of the new house. The ground floor is finished in quartered oak, the second in bird’s-eye maple, the third and fourth in sycamore, the fifth and sixth in red birch, and the seventh, eighth and ninth in oak. The wood was cut, carved and polished especially for the building, and is of the most exquisitely beautiful grain.

Max O’Rell would be pleased. Printed rules are not posted on all the bedroom doors: it would be an act of vandalism to thrust a nail into hard wood of such high polish and beautiful grain. The furniture and carpets harmonize in colors and are very rich: there seems to have been no thought of economy. The bedrooms are furnished as you would furnish your own apartment, provided you had a large bank account. They only lack pictures, mantel ornaments and such dainty etceteras, as you find, for instance, in the bedrooms of Long’s Hotel in London, to give them a finished, homelike and elegant air.

Some idea as to the extent to which this wood decoration is carried, may be gained when it is told that the wood used to decorate the parlor and music-room cost six thousand dollars, and yet they are small apartments when compared, say, with those of the Windsor Hotel, New York.

The music-room adjoins the parlor, and is only separated from it by a pair of portières. It is circular, with a frescoed dome. It is only twenty-four feet in diameter; but a veritable bijou is this music-room. It has tables and a cabinet of onyx, pieces of statuary and bronze, two piano lamps and a pedestal upon which stands a vase decorated with scenes painted by a French artist. The vase itself is three feet high. There are two semi-circular upholstered recesses in this room curtained in front. Occasionally these recesses are put to a very good use. I have seen young couples, a modern Claude and Pauline, engaged in very close conversation behind the curtains, whispering “soft nothings” to each other. “Soft” without doubt were the words spoken, and, so far as I heard, they amounted to nothing.

In the central front wall of this room there is a window, and pendant in this window is a colored lamp in which electric light is continually burning. There are similar lamps hanging in each of the cozy recesses--the scene, with its Moorish surroundings, reminding you of an Oriental synagogue, in which there is a similar lamp, and in which, according to Jewish custom in public places of worship, the light is never allowed to go out. Of electric lamps, there are twenty-five hundred in the house.

There is a ladies’ waiting-room which is strictly reserved for ladies; there is a ladies’ billiard-room, as well as one for gentlemen; there is a banqueting-room for public dinners at the top of the house, and at the bottom of the house there are cellars which contain a stock of choice wines valued at twenty thousand dollars.

The European plan is gaining in popularity in this country. When you proceed to write your name on the register at the Palace Hotel the clerk asks, “European or American plan?” At the California no such question is propounded; it is kept entirely on the European plan.

But they have a restaurant which is a feature, if not the feature of the house. It measures 120 × 30 feet, it has tiled floor, mirrored walls, beautifully decorated ceilings and countless electric lamps. During the dinner hour a band, stationed in a half-hidden gallery at the end of the restaurant, performs music that is properly called pleasing--light selections which suggest good cheer, and which no doubt aid digestion. The restaurant is entered from the street as well as from the interior, and such is its popularity that it is patronized by many people who are not otherwise guests of the house.

It is equal in style of service to any café I know of--to the Café Savarin or the Brunswick in New York; in fact, the manager, A. F. Kinzler, is a son of Francis Kinzler of the Brunswick.

The question of moustached waiters was easily settled at the California. They are skilled and experienced French and Swiss waiters, and there was no demur to the order, shave the upper lip.

SALT LAKE CITY.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, April 6, 1891.

On the last Sunday of last September I was one among the five thousand people who enjoyed the masterly eloquence of Spurgeon at his Tabernacle in London; to-day, Monday, I was in the Mormon Tabernacle, where a conference was being held, and in which were gathered as many people as the great building would hold,--seated and standing, twelve thousand.

Several Mormon elders held forth, but what they said did not particularly interest me. It was, for the most part, a defense of their form of “religion,” and they claimed they had a right, in this free country, to teach and practice their peculiar doctrine.

The acoustic properties of this great edifice are excellent; I tested them in different parts of the house, and heard almost every word that was said by the several speakers. Each spoke but for a short time, ten or fifteen minutes.

The most interesting part of Monday’s “session” to my mind was the musical part, a chorus of two hundred and fifty male and female voices singing to the rich and powerful tones of what is claimed to be the largest organ but one in the world.

A strange feature of the assemblage was the great number of young children and babes in arms; the crowd of baby carriages in the halls and entrances being very noticeable.

The exterior of the Tabernacle, from its oval shape, is often likened to half an egg bisected lengthwise; to me it looks like a tortoise, with its low curved roof and its remarkably short pillars, only a few feet apart.

But it is a mammoth tortoise, 250 × 150 feet, with not a column nor a pillar to obstruct the view--the largest span of unsupported wooden roof in the world.

The Temple in Salt Lake City, the corner-stone of which was laid on the twelfth of April, 1853, is, like the municipal buildings in Philadelphia, the City Hall in San Francisco and the Cathedral in Cologne, still unfinished, although $3,500,000 has been expended in its construction so far. The Temple’s dimensions are 200 × 100 feet.

It is built entirely of granite. The towers are beautiful. When completed they will be 200 feet high. A marble slab 12 × 3 feet is inserted in the centre tower. Upon that slab appears this inscription in gold letters:

“Holiness to the Lord, the house of the Lord. Built by the Church of Jesus Christ, of latter-day saints. Commenced April 6, 1853. Completed”--space is left under the word “completed” in which to insert the date, but that space may not be filled during the next quarter of a century.

The first blocks of granite for the building were hauled from the quarries, a distance of twenty miles, by oxen, but for many years past the granite has been brought to the city by a railroad planned originally by Mormons.

Salt Lake, on account of its unpaved streets, must be miserable as a place of residence. In wet weather the mud in the streets is from six inches to two feet deep, and in dry weather the dust is intolerable. It is probably not quite so bad in these respects as Key West, Florida, but it is always disagreeable enough. Yet the city is well laid out; all the streets are over one hundred feet wide; there is a good system of electric street-cars, and there are many fine granite and brick business blocks. Salt Lake has an evident air of prosperity. Its population has more than doubled in the past ten years. In 1880 it was 20,000; in 1890 45,000.

Brigham street, the Fifth avenue of Salt Lake, contains not a few private residences of which any city might be proud.

The leading hotel is “The Templeton,” owned by a company of which D. C. Young is president. The manager of the hotel is Alonzo Young. The president and the manager are both sons of Brigham Young, but are half brothers only. Brigham sleeps with a couple of his wives in a cemetery a few hundred feet from the hotel.

The Templeton is new and substantial, but it was not erected for a hotel, and it lacks some conveniences which you expect to find. It is better adapted for an office building, which was its original purpose.

The dining-room is on the top floor, as is the dining-room of the Auditorium in Chicago, and the Vendome in New York, and as is the kitchen of the Windsor Hotel in London.

From this room in the Templeton, if you secure a choice seat, you get most magnificent views. You are surrounded by snow-covered mountains, and to the west you see the principal buildings of the city--the Mormon Tabernacle, the Temple and the Assembly Hall, all enclosed and fenced within a ten-acre lot.

We were unfortunate in the time of our visit to Salt Lake. The city was crowded on account of the Mormon conference and all the hotels were full. At the Templeton they had an insufficient number of waiters and they served saucers of ice cream on warm plates.

But perhaps we are hypercritical in our notes on the shortcomings of hotels in Salt Lake; some allowance must be made for the fact that we had just come from a week at “The California”--that new and beautiful hotel in San Francisco which is kept by A. F. Kinzler, the comforts and elegancies of which, fresh in our memory and with their flavor, so to speak, still lingering on our palate, had for the time spoiled us for less perfect accommodations and an inferior style of living.

I had occasion to look at the city directory of Salt Lake and in turning over the leaves I noticed that there are living no less than nine widows of the lamented apostle of Mormonism, Brigham Young.

THE AUDITORIUM HOTEL.

CHICAGO, May 16, 1891.

During his engagement here I met Mr. Willard, the English actor, walking on Michigan avenue, with Mr. Hatton, the English dramatist, for companion.

“Mr. Willard, where are you staying,” I happened to ask. “At the Richelieu,” said the handsome and intellectual-looking Englishman. “I looked at the Auditorium,” he went on to say, “but it appeared to me too large, and such a stronghold that it almost reminded me of a prison.”

I am not surprised that its great size was an objection in his eyes, because Englishmen prefer smaller, quieter and more home-like houses; those great palaces in Northumberland avenue, London, were built rather for American patronage. But that the Auditorium looks as solid and strong as the rock of Gibraltar should not be regarded as an objection. In the eyes of most people this is a great advantage, especially when we remember the flimsy character of many of our hotels--those at the seaside, for instance, or those in small towns, to say nothing of many make-shift hotels in New York.

Among other excellent features of the Auditorium building there is this to commend it: it is called and is believed to be absolutely fireproof. The first and second story outside walls are of dark granite, the upper walls are of dark Bedford stone. The materials used interiorly are iron, brick, terra cotta, Italian marble and hard wood.

The whole structure covers one and a half acres. It stands on three streets, Michigan avenue, Wabash avenue and Congress street, with a frontage measuring seven hundred and ten feet. The height of the main building is ten stories; there are eight floors in the tower--two above the main tower--twenty stories in all; the entire height from street level to top of tower two hundred and seventy feet. Some authorities estimate the cost as high as four millions; the lowest estimate I have seen printed or heard mentioned is three million two hundred thousand dollars. It is possibly safe to say that about three millions were invested in the enterprise, and I am told that it has yielded a profit from the start--the hotel certainly has.

The structure includes a theatre called “the largest and most magnificent in the world”--the “Auditorium”--used for conventions and meetings, having a stage and what is called “the most costly organ in the world.” Of course, being Western, everything must be the biggest and costliest. There is also a Recital Hall, which seats five hundred persons. The business portion of the building includes stores on the ground floor and one hundred and thirty-six offices above, some of which are in the tower. The United States Signal Service occupies part of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth floors of the tower. From this tower you may get an extended view of the city when the fog from the lake is not dense, and when the chimneys of the town are not emitting black smoke. The best time to get a view is on a clear Sunday, when many of the factory fires are extinguished.

The Auditorium building is owned by “The Chicago Auditorium Association,” and is managed by them; the hotel proper, which forms only a part of the great structure, is managed by “The Auditorium Hotel Company,” and is a separate business concern.

It is kept on both the European and American plans. For those who choose the former there is a grand café on the ground floor; for those who prefer the latter there is a dining-room on the top floor, on which floor the kitchen is also situated. To the dining-room two elevators are constantly running. In the whole building there are thirteen elevators: in the hotel proper there are eight elevators, five for the use of guests, three for servants.

Besides the café below, and the public dining-room above, there are a number of private dining-rooms, and on the sixth floor there is a banqueting hall which will seat five hundred people and which may be called magnificent. It is built of steel, on trusses, and spans one hundred and twenty feet over “The Auditorium.” On the panelled walls are painted beautiful scenes in oil by skilled artists.

It does not lack for light, this banqueting hall; it contains four hundred electric lamps. In fact, the electric plant of the building is the largest private plant in the world--it is Western, you know. Its first cost was $100,000 and it costs to operate $175 per day. No electric department in any place, either public or private, that I have visited is cleaner, neater or more methodical in system. The tools are hung on the walls, behind glass doors. No workman may remove a tool without giving a receipt for the same and the tool must be returned to its place immediately after it has served the purpose for which it was removed or the man pays a fine.

“The office” is not a small, unimportant looking apartment like the “counting house” of an English hotel. It is after the American style, large and showy, but there is not a waste nor a wilderness of space as there is in some Chicago hotels, the “offices” in some of the Chicago houses being used not only for a public rendezvous but also for a public thoroughfare--people pass through them in going from one street to another to save themselves the trouble of walking around the block.

The floor of the office of the Auditorium Hotel is of Italian marble--mosaic work in artistic designs. To go into figures again, there are of mosaic floors in the house fifty thousand square feet, containing fifty million separate pieces of marble, each piece put in by hand. The ceiling, which is richly decorated, and from which depend numberless electric lights, is supported in the centre by five marble columns nine feet in circumference. The chairs and sofas, here and there, are of oak, plush-covered, and the walls are of nothing less luxurious than Mexican onyx, than which for the purpose probably no material is richer. Leading from the office to the parlor floor there is a white marble staircase twelve feet wide. This combination of rich materials and artistic work, with ample space, gives the Auditorium office a gorgeous, yes, a palace-like appearance.

The dining-room on the tenth floor, measuring 175 by 48 feet, affords extended views of the lake and a stretch of Chicago’s grand boulevard, Michigan avenue, as far as the eye can reach. The lower part of its walls is of mahogany panels; the six massive pillars which support the ceiling are of mahogany, the tables and chairs and Venetian blinds of the same costly wood. As well as six pillars, there are six arches in this room, which also has an arched ceiling. The walls above the mahogany dado up to the ceiling are in yellow and gold, the ceiling delicately and beautifully frescoed.

On one of the semi-circular arched walls above the mahogany pillars which support it, is painted a lake fishing scene, on the other a duck-shooting scene. The latter is taken from the estate of Ferd. W. Peck at Lake Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. It represents two or three men in sporting costume in a canoe, which is half hidden by tall grass and cat tails. The man in the bow stands ready to take aim at a flock of ducks which are preparing for flight. Mr. Peck is one of the originators of the Auditorium enterprise and the present president of the company.

There are five hundred electric lights in the dining-room; the floor is of marble mosaic. For the American plan two dinners are served. You can take your choice or eat both if your appetite serves; first dinner, from twelve till two; evening dinner from six to eight.