Chapter V: Part 5

One never tires of this bright chip of nature--this brave little voice crying in the wilderness--of observing his many works and ways, and listening to his curious language. His musical, piny gossip is as savory to the ear as balsam to the palate; and, though he has not exactly the gift of song, some of his notes are as sweet as those of a linnet--almost flute-like in softness, while others prick and tingle like thistles. He is the mocking-bird of squirrels, pouring forth mixed chatter and song like a perennial fountain; barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow; while in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a very jay.

JOHN MUIR, in _The Mountains of California._

OCTOBER 20.

A beautiful sight it must have been, the wild-eyed graceful mustang with its gaily dressed rider sweeping hither and thither among the frightened hosts, swerving suddenly to right or left to avoid the horns of some infuriated beast, the riata flashing high in air, then, with unerring aim, descending upon the shoulders of some reluctant prisoner; amid all the confusion the bursts of musical laughter or noisier applause, then the oaths, in the liquid Spanish tongue sounding sweetly to the ear of the uninitiated.

HELEN ELLIOTT BANDINI, in _Camping with Fox-Hounds in Southern California, Overland Monthly, February_, 1892.

OCTOBER 21.

Immediately, with that short, pumping bay that tells the trail is hot, the game near, and sends the blood rushing to one's very finger-ends, the swaying, eager line of hounds came swiftly down the rocky slope, across the gully ahead and up the other side, following, exactly, the path of the game. One directly behind the other they went, heads well up, so strong was the scent, necks out-stretched, rumps in air, tails wagging in short, fierce strokes. No thought had they for us, intent only on the game their noses told them must be close at hand.

HELEN ELLIOTT BANDINI, in _Hunting the Wild Cat in Southern California. From Overland Monthly, March_, 1892.

OCTOBER 22.

Life is a fight. Millions fail. Only the strong win. Failure is worse than death. Man's internal strength is created by watching circumstances like a hawk, meeting her every spring stiff and straight, laughing at her pit-falls--which in the beginning of life are excess, excess, and always excess, and all manner of dishonor. Strength is created by adversity, by trying to win first the small battles of life, then the great, by casting out fear, by training the mind to rule in all things--the heart, the passions, the impulses, which if indulged make the brain the slave instead of the master. Success, for which alone a man lives, if he be honest with himself, comes to those who are strong, strong, strong.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _Rulers of Kings._

OCTOBER 23.

WITH THE ARIZONA COWBOYS.

The cow or steer that is selected to be roped or cut out rarely escapes. While the horse is in hot pursuit the rider dexterously whirls his riata above his head until, at a favorable moment, it leaves his hand, uncoiling as it flies through the air, and if the throw is successful, the noose falls over the animal's head. Suddenly the horse comes to a full stop and braces himself for the shock. When the animal caught reaches the end of the rope it is brought to an abrupt halt and tumbled in a heap on the ground. * * * The cowboy is out of the saddle and on his feet in a jiffy. He grasps the prostrate animal by the tail and a hind leg, throws it on its side, and ties its four feet together, so that it is helpless and ready for branding or inspection.

J.A. MUNK, in _Arizona Sketches._

OCTOBER 24.

So here I am--settled at the ole Bar Y. And it'd take a twenty-mule team t'pull me offen it. Of a evenin', like this, the boss, he sits on the east porch, smokin'; the boys're strung along the side of the bunk-house t'rest and pass and laugh; and, out yonder, is the cottonwoods, same as ever, and the ditch, and the mesquite leveler'n a floor; and--up over it all--the moon, white and smilin'.

Then, outen the door nigh where the sunflowers're growin', mebbe she'll come--a slim, little figger in white. And, if it's plenty warm, and not too late, why, she'll be totin' the smartest, cutest---- * * * That's my little wife--that's Macie, now--a-singin' to the kid!

ELEANOR GATES, in _Cupid: the Cow-Punch._

OCTOBER 25.

Let this be known, that a west-land ranch is no more than a farm, and a farm at the outermost edge of man's dominions is forever a school and a field of strife and a means of grace to those who live thereon.

* * * The ways of the earth, the ways of the seasons, the ways of the elements, these had something to impart, eternally. And man, no longer in the bond with the wild things all about him, wages ceaseless war against them, to protect his crops and the fowls and the animals that have come beneath his guardian-ship and know no laws of the air-folk, the brush-folk, or the forest-folk with whom they were once in brotherhood.

PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS, in _Chatwit, the Man-Talk Bird._

OCTOBER 26.

And after supper, when the sun was down, and they was just a kinda half-light on the mesquite, and the old man was on the east porch, smokin', and the boys was all lined up along the front of the bunk-house, clean outen sight of the far side of the yard, why I just sorta wandered over to the calf-corral, then 'round by the barn and the Chink's shack, and landed up out to the west, where they's a row of cottonwoods by the new irrigatin' ditch. Beyond, acrost a hunderd mile of brown plain, here was the moon a-risin', bigger'n a dishpan, and a cold white. I stood agin a tree and watched it crawl through the clouds. The frogs was a-watchin', too, I reckon, fer they begun to holler like the dickens, some bass and some squeaky. And then, frum the other side of the ranch-house, struck up a mouth-organ.

ELEANOR GATES, in _Cupid: the Cow-Punch._

OCTOBER 27.

EL VAQUERO.

Tinged with the blood of Aztec lands,
Sphinx-like, the tawny herdsman stands,
A coiled riata in his hands.
Devoid of hope, devoid of fear,
Half brigand, and half cavalier--
This helot, with imperial grace,
Wears ever on his tawny face
A sad, defiant look of pain.
Left by the fierce iconoclast,
A living fragment of the past--
Greek of the Greeks he must remain.

LUCIUS HARWOOD FOOTE.

His broad brimmed hat push'd back with careless air,
The proud vaquero sits his steed as free
As winds that toss his black, abundant hair.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

OCTOBER 28.

There was to be a _rodeo_ on the Del Garda ranch. Out of the thousands of that moving herd could they single the mighty steer that bore their brand, or the wild-eyed cow whose yearling calf had not yet felt the searing-iron. Into the very midst of the seething mass would a _vaquero_ dart, single out his victim without a moment's halt, drive the animal to the open space, and throw his lasso with unerring aim. If a steer proved fractious two of the centaurs would divide the labor, and while one dexterously threw the rope around his horns, the other's lasso had quickly caught the hind foot, and together they brought him to the earth.

JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD McCRACKIN, in _Overland Tales._

OCTOBER 29.

Near noon we came to a little cattle ranch situated in a flat surrounded by red dykes and buttes after the manner of Arizona. Here we unpacked, early as it was, for through the dry countries one has to apportion his day's journeys by the water to be had. If we went farther today, then tomorrow night would find us in a dry camp.

The horses scampered down the flat to search out alfilaria. We roosted under a slanting shed--where were stock saddles, silver-mounted bits and spurs, rawhide riatas, branding-irons, and all the lumber of the cattle business. * * * Shortly the riders began to come in, jingling up to the shed, with a rattle of spurs and bit-chains. * * * The chief, a six-footer wearing beautifully decorated gauntlets and a pair of white buckskin _chaps_, went so far as to say it was a little warm for the time of year.

STEWART EDWARD WHITE, in _The Mountains._

OCTOBER 30.

HANDS UP!

This is a request that, in the wild and woolly West, "may not be denied"; and the braver the man is to whom it is addressed, the quicker does he hasten to comply. Indeed, it would argue the height of folly if, after a glance into the barrels of a "sawed off," and a look at the determined eyes behind them, covering your every move, you did not instantly elevate your hands, and do it with cheerful alacrity. The plea, "He had the drop on me," will clear you in any frontier Court of Honor.

A.E. LYNCH, in _Self-Torture._

OCTOBER 31.

OUT WEST.

When the world of waters was parted by the stroke of a mighty rod,
Her eyes were first of the lands of earth to look on the face of God;
The white mists robed and throned her, and the sun in his orbit wide
Bent down from his ultimate pathway and claimed her his chosen bride;
And He that had formed and dowered her with the dower of a royal
queen,
Decreed her the strength of mighty hills, the peace of the plains
between;
The silence of utmost desert, and canyons rifted and riven,
And the music of wide-flung forests where strong winds shout to
heaven.

* * * * *

Calling--calling--calling--resistless, imperative, strong--
Soldier and priest and dreamer--she drew them, a mighty throng.
The unmapped seas took tribute of many a dauntless band,
And many a brave hope measured but bleaching bones in the sand;
Yet for one that fell, a hundred sprang out to fill his place,
For death at her call was sweeter than life in a tamer race.
Sinew and bone she drew them; steel-thewed--and the weaklings shrank--
Grim-wrought of granite and iron were the men of her foremost rank.

* * * * *

The wanderers of earth turned to her--outcast of the older lands--
With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them
pitying hands;
And she cried to the Old World cities that drowse by the Eastern main:
"Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you men again!
Lo! here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow,
Is room for a larger reaping than your o'er-tilled fields can grow;
Seed of the Man-seed springing to stature and strength in my sun,
Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men, have won."

SHARLOT HALL, in _Out West._

NOVEMBER 1.

One night when the plain was like a sea of liquid black, and the sky blazed with stars, we rode by a sheep-herder's camp. The flicker of a fire threw a glow out into the dark. A tall wagon, a group of silhouetted men, three or four squatting dogs, were squarely within the circle or illumination. And outside, in the penumbra of shifting half light, now showing clearly, now fading into darkness, were the sheep, indeterminate in bulk, melting away by mysterious thousands into the mass of night. We passed them. They looked up, squinting their eyes against the dazzle of the fire. The night closed about us again.

STEWART EDWARD WHITE, in _The Mountains._

NOVEMBER 2.

THE DROUTH: 1898.

No low of cattle from these silent fields
Fills, with soft sounds of peace, the evening air;
No fresh-mown hay its scented incense yields
From these sad meadows, stricken brown and bare.

The brook, that rippled on its summer way,
Shrinks out of sight within its sandy bed,
Defenseless of a covert from the ray,
Dazzling and pitiless, that beams o'erhead.

The rose has lost its bloom; the lily dies;
Our garden's perfumed treasures all are fled;
The bee no longer to their sweetness flies,
The humming-bird no longer dips his head.

The butterfly--that fairy-glancing thing--
Ethereal blossom of the light and air!
No longer poises on its fluttering wing;
How could it hover in this bleak despair?

FRANCES M. MILNE, in _For Today._

NOVEMBER 3.

During this first autumn rain, those of us who are so fortunate as to live in the country are conscious of a strange odor pervading all the air. It is as though Dame Nature were brewing a vast cup of herb tea, mixing in the fragrant infusion all the plants dried and stored so carefully during the summer. When the clouds vanish after this baptismal shower, everything is charmingly fresh and pure, and we have some of the rarest of days. Then the little seeds, harbored through the long summer in earth's bosom, burst their coats and push up their tender leaves, till on hillside and valley-floor appears a delicate mist of green, which gradually confirms itself into a soft, rich carpet--and all the world is verdure clad. Then we begin to look eagerly for our first flowers.

MARY ELIZABETH PARSONS, in _The Wild Flowers of California._

NOVEMBER 4.

In basketry the Pomo Indians of California found an outlet for the highest conceptions of art that their race was capable of. Protected by their isolation from other tribes, they worked out their ideas undisturbed--with every incentive for excellence they had reached a height in basketry when the American first disturbed them which has never been equaled--not only by no other Indian tribe, but by no other people in the world in any age. These stolid Indian women have a knowledge of materials and their preparation, a delicacy of touch, an artistic conception of symmetry, of form and design, a versatility in varying and inventing beautiful designs, and an eye for color, which place their work on a high plane of art.

CARL PURDY, in _Out West._

NOVEMBER 5.

WHEN IT RAINS IN CALIFORNY.

When it rains in Californy
It makes the tourist mad,
But folks that's got the crops to raise
Is feelin' mighty glad;
I stand out in the showers,
Wet as a drownded rat,
And watch the grain a-growin',
And the cattle gettin' fat.

Sorry for them Easterners,
Kickin' like Sam Hill,
But the sun-kissed land is thirsty
And wants to drink its fill.
Oh, hear the poppies laughin',
And the happy mockers sing,
When it rains in Californy,
Through the glory of the spring.

JOHN S. McGROARTY, in _Just California._

NOVEMBER 6.

The broad valley had darkened. The mountains opposite had lost their sharp details and dulled to an opaque silver blue in the mists of twilight. They had become great shadow mountains, broad spirit masses, and seemed to melt imperceptibly from form to form toward the horizon....

There had come a harmony more perfect than life could ever give. It included all their love that had gone before and something greater, vaster--all life, all nature, and all God.

HAROLD S. SYMMES, in _The Divine Benediction, Putnam's, Oct._, 1906.

NOVEMBER 7.

AFTER THE RAIN.

"Sweet fields stand dressed in living green,"
That late were brown and bare.
The twitter of the calling birds
With music fills the air.

Was ever sky so heavenly blue--
"Clear shining after rain!"
Was ever wind so soft and pure,
To breathe away our pain!

Oh, roses white, and roses red,
Your fragrant leaves unfold!
Oh, lily, lift your chalice pure
And show your heart of gold!

FRANCES MARGARET MILNE, in _For To-day._

NOVEMBER 8.

She does not appear in public, and her name is seldom seen in the newspapers. She writes no books, delivers no lectures, paints no great pictures, but remains the inconspicuous, silent worker, blessing her home, reinforcing her husband, bringing up her children, and doing the most important work God has intrusted to the hands of a woman. She is still a great force in the nation; for the hand that rocks the cradle still rules the world. Whenever you find a great man, you will find a great woman. All successful men, it will be found, depend upon some woman. So Garfield thought when he kissed his mother after kissing the Bible, when made President of the United States.

REV. WILLIAM RADER, in _Lecture on Uncle Sam; or The Reign of the Common People._

NOVEMBER 9.

Found that "gracious hollow that God made" in his mother's shoulder that fit his head as pillows of down never could. Cried when they took him away from it, when he was a tiny baby, "with no language but a cry." Cried once again, twenty-five or thirty years afterward, when God took it away from him. All the languages he had learned, and all the eloquent phrasing the colleges had taught him, could not then voice the sorrow of his heart so well as the tears he tried to check.

ROBERT J. BURDETTE, in _The Story of Rollo._

NOVEMBER 10.

Lovely color and graceful outline and clever texture are good things, but we need more, much more, for the making of a real picture. When the soul is brimming with an overflowing bounty of beauty, all means are inadequate to express the fullness of its splendor. Man has not yet come to his full heritage, but every new mode of expression is an added language which brings him a little nearer to it.

W.L. JUDSON, in _The Building of a Picture._

The future of this country depends naturally upon the caliber of the succeeding generations, and if the Catholic Church is to succeed in California or elsewhere along material as well as spiritual lines, it must keep the fear of God in our men and the love of children in our women, and if these two fundamental virtues are thoroughly sustained, we need have no anxiety as to the future.

JOSEPH SCOTT, in _Speech at the Seattle Exposition._

NOVEMBER 11.

BEAUTY.

A hint is flung from the scene most fair
That real beauty is not there;
That earth and blossom, sea and sky,
Would be empty without the seeing eye,
That form and color, movement and rhythm
Are not true elements of heaven
Till passed through transforming power of thought;
For eye seeth only what soul hath wrought.
Ah! Beauty, thou the flowering art
Of the upright mind and guileless heart.

MARY RUSSELL MILLS.

NOVEMBER 12.

THE BRAKEMAN AT CHURCH.

After asking the Brakeman if he had been to each of the leading churches, the querist finally suggested the Baptists. "Ah, ha!" he shouted. "Now you're on the Shore Line! River Road, eh? Beautiful curves, lines of grace at every bend and sweep of the river; all steel rail and rock ballast; single track, and not a siding from the round-house to the terminus. Takes a heap of water to run it through; double tanks at every station, and there isn't an engine in the shops that can run a mile or pull a pound with less than two gauges. * * * And yesterday morning, when the conductor came around taking up fares with a little basket punch, I didn't ask him to pass me; I paid my fare like a little Jonah--twenty-five cents for a ninety-minute run, with a concert by the passengers thrown in."

ROBERT J. BURDETTE, _Pastor Emeritus Temple Baptist Church, Los Angeles._

NOVEMBER 13.

Directly opposite sat a Chinese dignitary richly apparrelled, serene, bland, bearing with courteous equanimity flirtatious overtures of an unattached blonde woman at his left, and the pert coquetry of a young girl at the other side. The mother of the girl ventured meek, unheeded remonstrances between mouthfuls of crab salad. * * *

"But you have not answered my question," he reminded her. "Do you believe in affinities?"

"I think that I do," hesitatingly.

"You are not certain?"

"N-o; if to have an affinity means to have a very dear friend, whom one trusts, and whom one desires to make happy--"

"You speak as if you had such a friend in mind," he hazarded.

"I have," she replied simply.

"Happy man!" he sighed.

"I referred to my St. Bernard dog."

"Oh!" Protracted silence. "No use," he drawled. "My pride will not let me enter the lists with a St. Bernard."

"That is not pride, but modesty," she asserted, and laughed. Her laughter reminded Horton of liquid sunshine, melted pearls, and sparkling cascades.

IDA MANSFIELD WILSON, in _According to Confucius._

NOVEMBER 14.

There's only one thing to do, there can be but one--to say the thing your soul says, to live the life your heart wills, to die the death your imagination approves and your spirit sanctions!

MIRIAM MICHELSON, in _Anthony Overman._

NOVEMBER 15.

TWO LITTLE CHINESE SISTERS.

Their blouses were of pink silk, and their trousers of pale lavender. They wore gay head-dresses, and were indeed beautiful to look upon.

Sai Gee, a little-footed playmate of theirs, lived a few doors from them, and they had no difficulty in finding her home. Sai Gee was also dressed up in her gayest attire. * * * Sai Gee could play the flute. It was really wonderful. She sat upon a stool, over which an embroidered robe had been thrown, and played to them. Her hair was done in a coil back of her right ear, and her little brown face was sweet and wistful as she brought forth from the flute the most wonderful sounds.

JESSIE JULIET KNOX, in _Little Almond Blossoms._

NOVEMBER 16.

She was only a little yellow woman from Asia, with queer, wide trousers for skirts and rocker-soled shoes that flopped against her heels. Her uncovered black hair was firmly knotted and securely pinned and her eyes were black of color and soft of look. * * * She saw the morning sun push its way through a sea of amber and the nickel dome of the great observatory on Mount Hamilton standing ebony against the radiant East. She heard the Oriental jargon of the early hucksters who cried their wares in the ill-smelling alleys, and with tears she added to the number of pearls which the dew had strewn upon the porch.

W.C. MORROW, in _The Ape, the Idiot and Other People._

NOVEMBER 17.

Sing is not included in the category of "goody-goody" boys. He is full of fun, and play, and willful pranks, and he sees the ridiculous side of everything quickly, but he seems naturally to accept only the good and to shun evil in any form. He is pure and innocent by nature and seems attracted to every person of similar characteristics. He has discernment and watches the faces of people closely, seeming to care more for their motives than for their deeds.

NELLIE BLESSING EYSTER, in _A Chinese Quaker._

NOVEMBER 18.

INDIAN ARROW HEADS FOUND IN CALIFORNIA.

Obsidian is a beautiful, translucent volcanic rock, usually black, with cloudy flecks, as are seen in jade; like jade it is so hard as to be capable of taking an edge like a razor. Flaked on its flat surface and often beautifully serrated on the edge, an arrowhead or a spearhead is in itself a thing of beauty and a work of art, whether the Indian manufacturer knew it or not.

L. CLARE DAVIS in "Long Ago in San Joaquin," in _Sunset Magazine._

In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
I shall stay no more away--
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day.

In a year, in a year, when my time is past--
Then I'll live in your love for aye.
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day.

JACK LONDON.

NOVEMBER 19.

Had California owed her settlement and civic life wholly to the vanguard of that pioneer host, which ... pressed steadily westward to Kansas and the Rockies, the Golden State would not have today that literary flavor that renders her in a measure a unique figure among the western states of the country.

JAMES MAIN DIXON, in _California and Californians in Literature._

NOVEMBER 20.

All things are but material reflections of mental images. This is realized in picture and statue in temple and machine. The picture is but a faint representation of the picture in the soul of painter. He did his best to catch it with brush and canvas. Had it not existed for him before the brush was in his hand, it would never have been painted. * * * Concentration is the only mental attitude under which mental images (ideals) shape themselves into the material life. As long as you hold an ideal before you that long is it shaping itself into your body, your business and into your social life. When you change your ideal then the new begins to shape itself. Have you, like the sculptor, held to one till it carves itself "into the marble real?" Or have you taken the life-block and placed it into the hands of an Ideal today, another tomorrow, and another next day, till you have as many ideals as you have days? * * * Is not your life a composite of all these, not one complete? Concentration means holding to one ideal until your objective life becomes that mental picture. Thus it is true: I am that which I think myself to be.

HENRY HARRISON BROWN, in _Concentration: The Road to Success._

NOVEMBER 21.

The process which we call evolution is the return of the atom to God, or the extension of consciousness in the growing creation, and this process which unifies all that exists or can exist in our world is the working out of the One Purpose and Plan by the One Power. This is what we mean by the Spiritual Constitution of the Universe, and in the light of this thought every person, animal, plant and mineral, every atom and all force, all events and circumstances and conditions and objects are more or less intelligent and conscious expressions of the One Purpose and the One Life. Man is thus led to count nothing human foreign to him, and his inner eyes open to perceive Truth, Goodness and Beauty everywhere.

BENJAMIN FAY MILLS, in _The New Revelation._

NOVEMBER 22.

Laughter is the music of the soul. It is the sun falling on the rain drops. Laughter is the nightingale's voice in the night. It chases away care, destroys worry. It is the intoxicating cup of good nature, which cheers, but does not cheat. Laughter paints pictures, dreams dreams, and floods life with love. Blessed are the people who can laugh! Laughter is religion and hope; and the apostles of good nature, who see the bright side of life, the queer and funny things among men, the clowns in Vanity Fair, as well as the deep and terrible pathos of life, are missionaries of comfort and evangels of good health.

REV. WILLIAM RADER, in _Lecture on Uncle Sam; or The Reign of the Common People._

NOVEMBER 23.

Given so unique a climate as ours of Southern California, one would expect it to be hailed gladly as a helper in the solution of this problem of how and where to build and how to adorn one's home. For it really meets the most trying items of the problem, making it a pure pleasure.

Instead, then, of the styles which suit the winter-climate of other states, and which, transplanted here, have grown too often into mongrel specimens of foreign style and other times--we should adapt our Southern California homes, first of all, to the climatic conditions which prevail here.

MADAME CAROLINE SEVERANCE, in _The Mother of Clubs._

NOVEMBER 24.

Houses furnished in all the styles of modern decorative art rise in all directions, embowered in roses, geraniums, heliotropes, and lilies that bloom the long year round and reach a size that makes them hard to recognize as old friends. Among them rise the banana, the palm, the aloe, the rubber tree, and the pampas-grass with its tall feathery plumes. Here and there one sees the guava, the Japanese persimmon, Japanese plum, or some similar exotic--but grapes and oranges are the principal product. Yet there are groves of English walnuts almost rivaling in size the great orange orchards, and orchards of prunes, nectarines, apricots, plums, pears, peaches, and apples that are little behind in size or productiveness.

T.S. VAN DYKE, in _Southern California._

NOVEMBER 25.

He saw a great hall furnished in the most extravagantly complete style of Indian art. The walls were entirely covered with Navaho and Hopi blankets. There was a frieze of Apache hide-shields, each painted with a brave's totem, and beneath, a solid cornice of buffalo skulls. Puma-skins carpeted the floor; at least a hundred baskets trimmed with wood-pecker and quail feathers were scattered about; trophies of Indian bows, arrows, lances, war-clubs, tomahawks, pipes and knives decorated the wall spaces. Two couches were made up of Zuni bead-work ornaments and buck-skin embroideries. In spite of all this, it was a tastefully designed room, rather than a museum, flaming with color and vibrant with vitality.

GELETT BURGESS, in _A Little Sister of Destiny._

NOVEMBER 26.

She sent a hundred messages out into the hills by thought's wonderful telegraphy. She saw the yellow-green of the new shoots; the gray-green of the gnarled live oak; she felt that the mariposa was waking in the brown hillside. She almost heard the creamy bells of the tall yucca pealing out a hymn to the God who expresses himself in continual creation. Then, O, wonder of wonders! Over the same invisible wires came back the response: It all means love, the earth's rendings, the rains, winds, scorchings--it all means love in the grand consummation, nothing but love. She thrilled to the wonder of it.

ELIZABETH BAKER BOHAN, in _The Strength of the Weak._

NOVEMBER 27.

THE IDEAL CALIFORNIA EDITOR.

The ideal editor must be a colossal, composite figure, one to whom no man of whatever age, race or color, is a stranger; one whose mobility of character and elasticity of temperament expands or contracts as occasion demands, without deflecting in the least from the law of perfect harmony. He must know how to smile encouragement, frown disapproval, or, at an instant's notice bow deferentially and attend with utmost courtesy to wearisome stories of stupid patrons, or listen to the fantastic schemes of radical reformers and, with apparent seriousness and ostensible amiability, nod acquiescence to the wild-eyed revolutionist upon whom he inwardly vows to keep a careful watch lest the fire-brand agitator commit serious public mischief. The ideal editor of the popular press must be the quintescence of tact; an adroit strategist, a sagacious chief executive, keenly critical, ably judicial, broad, generous, sympathetic, hospitable, aye, charitable, magnanimous, ready to forgive and forget, patient and long-suffering when subjected to the competitive lash of adverse criticism, bearing calumny rather with quiet dignity than stooping to low and vulgar forms of retaliation.

BERTHA HIRSCH BARUCH, in _Sunday Times Magazine._

NOVEMBER 28.

CALIFORNIA TO IRELAND.

Great! Erect! Majestic! Free!
Thrilled with life from sea to sea.
See the Motherland uphold
To the sky her Green and Gold.

LAURENCE BRANNICK.

NOVEMBER 29.

And the books! Without final data at hand, I incline to believe that by the time the war came along to give us a new text, California had already, in a dozen years, doubled the volume of American literature. In the same way, of course, that it was doubled again--for our war literature was not mostly written upon the battle-field. In half a century this current has not ceased. It is a lean month even now which does not see, somewhere, some sort of book about California. It is certain that as much literature (using the word as it is used) has been written of California as of all the other states together. This means, of course, only matter in which the State is an essential, not an incident.

CHARLES F. LUMMIS, in _The Right Hand of the Continent, Out West, June_, 1902.

NOVEMBER 30.

By a queer sequence of circumstances, the essays, begun in the _Lark_, were continued in the _Queen_, and, if you have read these two papers, you will know that one magazine is as remote in character from the other as San Francisco is from London. But each has happened to fare far afield in search of readers, and between them I may have converted a few to my optimistic view of every-day incident. To educate the British Matron and Young Person was, perhaps, no more difficult than to open the eyes of the California Native Son. The fogs that fall over the Thames are not very different to the mists that drive in through the Golden Gate, after all!

GELETT BURGESS, in _The Romance of the Commonplace._

DECEMBER 1.

The Bohemian Club, whose real founder is said to have been the late Henry George, was formed in the '70's by newspaper writers and men working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a membership of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers, musicians and actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group of men, and hospitality was their evocation. Yet the thing which set this club off from all others in the world was the midsummer High Jinks. The club owned a fine tract of redwood forest fifty miles north of San Francisco. In August the whole Bohemian Club, or such as could get away from business, went up to this grove and camped out for two weeks. On the last night they put on the Jinks proper, a great spectacle in praise of the forest with poetic words, music and effects done by the club. In late years this has been practically a masque or an opera. It cost about $10,000. * * * The thing which made it possible was the art spirit which is in the Californian.

WILL IRWIN, in _The City That Was._

DECEMBER 2.

Nearly all is now covered with a luxuriant growth of vegetation the most diverse, yet all of it foreign to the soil. Side by side are the products of two zones, reaching the highest stages of perfection, yet none of them natives of this coast.

Gay cottages now line the roads where so recently the hare cantered along the dusty cattle-trail; and villages lie brightly green with a wealth of foliage where the roaring wings of myriads of quail shook the air above impenetrable jungles of cactus.

T.S. VAN DYKE, in _Southern California._

DECEMBER 3.

* * * The chief and highest function of the University is to assert and perpetually prove that general principles--laws--govern Man, Society, Nature, Life; and to make unceasing war on the reign of temporary expedients. * * * There never was a period or a country in which the reign of fundamental law needed constant assertion and more perpetual proof than our own period and our own country. * * * The living danger is that society may come to permanently distrust the reign of law. * * * A national or a personal life built on expedients of the day, like a house built on the sand, will inevitably come to ruin.

PRESIDENT HOLDEN, in _Inaugural Address of University of California_, 1886.

DECEMBER 4.

And now my story is told, the story of my work, and the story of my life. Looking back over all the long stretch of years that I have carried this heavy burden, though I should not care to assume it again, yet I am not sorry to have borne it. Of the various motives which urge men to the writing of books, perhaps the most worthy, worthier by far than the love of fame, is the belief that the author has something to say which will commend itsself to his fellow-man, which perchance his fellow-man may be the better for hearing. If I have fulfilled in some measure even the first of these conditions, then has my labor not been in vain.

HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT, in _Literary Industries._

DECEMBER 5.

LAW IN THE EARLY MINING-CAMPS.

Here, in a new land, under new conditions, subjected to tremendous pressure and strain, but successfully resisting them, were associated bodies of freemen bound together for a time by common interests, ruled by equal laws, and owning allegiance to no higher authority than their own sense of right and wrong. They held meetings, chose officers, decided disputes, meted out a stern and swift punishment to offenders, and managed their local affairs with entire success; and the growth of their committees was proceeding at such a rapid rate, that days and weeks were often sufficient for vital changes, which, in more staid communities, would have required months or even years.

CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, in _Mining Camps._

DECEMBER 6.

New towns were laid out in the valleys to supply the camps, and those already established grew with astonishing rapidity. Stockton, for instance, increased in three months from a solitary ranch-house to a canvas city of one thousand inhabitants. Sacramento also became a canvas city, whose dust-clouds whirled, and men, mules, and oxen toiled; where boxes, barrels, bales innumerable, were piled in the open air, no shelter being needed for months. For the City Hotel, Sacramento, thirty thousand dollars per year was paid as rent, although it was only a small frame building. The Parker House, San Francisco, cost thirty thousand dollars to build, and rented for fifteen thousand dollars per month.

CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, in _Mining Camps._

DECEMBER 7.

The prospector is the advance agent of progress, civilization and prosperity. * * * It is for the sight of a yellow streak in his pan that he has been tempted to endure the fatigue, cold, and hunger of the mountains, and the heat, thirst and horror of the desert.

The prospector is a man of small pretensions, of peaceful disposition, indomitable will, boundless perseverance, remarkable endurance, undoubted courage, irrepressible hopefulness, and unlimited hospitality He is the friend of every man till he has evidence that the man is his enemy, and he is the most respected man in the mining regions of the West.

ARTHUR J. BURDICK, in _The Mystic Mid-Region._

DECEMBER 8.

To a little camp of 1848 a lad of sixteen came one day, footsore, weary, hungry, and penniless. There were thirty robust and cheerful miners at work in the ravine; and the lad sat on the bank, watching them awhile in silence, his face telling the sad story of his fortunes. At last one stalwart miner spoke to his fellows, saying:

"Boys, I'll work an hour for that chap if you will."

At the end of the hour a hundred dollars' worth of gold dust was laid in the youth's handkerchief. The miners made out a list of tools and necessaries.

"You go," they said, "and buy these, and come back. We'll have a good claim staked out for you. Then you've got to paddle for yourself." Thus genuine and unconventional was the hospitality of the mining-camp.

CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, in __Mining Camps._

DECEMBER 9.

Down in the gulch bottoms were the old placer diggings. Elaborate little ditches for the deflection of water, long cradles for the separation of gold, decayed rockers, and shining in the sun the tons and tons of pay dirt which had been turned over pound by pound in the concentrating of its treasure. Some of the old cabins still stood. It was all deserted now, save for the few who kept trail for the freighters, or who tilled the restricted bottom lands of the flats. Road-runners racked away down the paths; squirrels scurried over worn-out placers, jays screamed and chattered in and out of the abandoned cabins. And the warm California sun embalmed it all in a peaceful forgetfulness.

STEWART EDWARD WHITE, in _The Mountains._

DECEMBER 10.

GOD IS EVERYWHERE.

Under the grass, the flowers, and the sod
Go deep enough and you will find God.
The royal red-gold of the sunset glow
A veil for His unseen face doth show.
And all the star-cool vastnesses of night
Still hide Him not from the Spirit's sight.

I will see Him in all, I will trust Him in all,
I will love but the God, to the God will I call.
Till God, full and perfect, every soul shall reveal,
And God's glorious purpose each life shall fulfill;
Till the earth showeth whole, without break, without seam,
Till God's truth and God's beauty stand clear and supreme.

MARY RUSSELL MILLS, in _Fellowship Magazine._

DECEMBER 11.

THE KILLING OF THE DEVIL, AS TOLD IN THE LANGUEDOC FOLK-TALE OF THE THREE STRONG MEN.

Oh! that was a desperate struggle--terrific and horrible to see! The devil shrieked and howled; he scratched and bit; while Crowbar, dumb and purple in the face, gave telling blows with his fists. He could not strike the devil's head, because of the horns, and he could not grab his body, because it was so sleek and slimy. At length the devil's strength gave out. Crowbar siezed him by the throat, threw him on his back, put a knee upon his breast, and, with the cane in his right hand, gave him a blow between the horns that split his head in two. But he died hard. His head was split open, yet he was struggling, whipping the ground with his tail, and foaming at the mouth. At last he was still.

SAMUEL JACQUES BRUN, in _Tales of Languedoc._

DECEMBER 12.

FROM "AFTER HEARING PARSIFAL."

The century new announces, "Victory!"--
Through Music's witchery o'er Sin and Hell
Man is redeemed. The Christ is here! The Soul
Now claims its own! Nor hope nor fear
Nor prayer nor hunger now, for lo! 'tis here,
The expected Kingdom--God's and Man's! 'Tis here!
Day-dawn has come! The world-wide quest is o'er!
The Grail was never lost! 'Twas folded safe
Within the petals of my heart, and thou
Enchanter wise, reveal'st to me, my Self!

HENRY HARRISON BROWN, in _Now, May_, 1904.

DECEMBER 13.

THE VOICE OF THE SNOW.

Silently flying through the darkened air, swirling, glinting, to their appointed places, they seem to have taken counsel together, saying, "Come, we are feeble; let us help one another. We are many, and together we will be strong. Marching in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountain sepulchers, and set the landscape free. Let us uncover these clustering domes. Here let us carve a lake basin; there a Yosemite Valley; here, a channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for the plunge of songful cataracts. Yonder let us spread broad sheets of soil, that man and beast may be fed; and here pile trains of boulders for pines and giant sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow; there for a garden and grove."

JOHN MUIR, in _The Mountains of California._

DECEMBER 14.

It was winter in San Francisco--not the picturesque winter of the North or South, but a mild and intermediate season, as if the great zones had touched hands, and earth were glad of the friendly feeling. There is no breath from a cold Atlantic to chill the ardor of these thoughts. Our great, tranquil ocean lies in majesty to the west. It can fume and fret, but it does so in reason. It does not lash and storm in vain.

FRANCES CHARLES, in _The Siege of Youth._

May the tangling of sunshine and roses never cease upon your path until after the snows of Winter have covered your way with whiteness.

MARTIN V. MERLE, in _The Vagabond Prince, Act IV._

DECEMBER 15.

It was one of those wonderful warm winter days given to San Francisco instead of the spring she has never experienced. After a week's rain the sun shone out of a sky as warmly blue as late spring brings in other climates. The world seemed in a very rapture of creation. The bay below the garden, new washed and sparkling like a pale emerald, spread gaily out, and the city's streets terraced down to meet it. The peculiar delicacy and richness of California roses coaxed by the softness of the climate to live out-doors sent up a perfume that hot-house flowers cannot yield. The turf was of a thick, healthy, wet green, teeming with life. The hills beyond were green as summer in California cannot make them, and off to the west against the tender sky the cross on Lone Mountain was etched.

MIRIAM MICHELSON, in _Anthony Overman._

DECEMBER 16.

The story is never fully told, and the power of paint or pen can never express entirely the glory or the strength of the conception which impelled it. The best is still withheld, inexpressible in human terms.

Our best songs are still unsung; our best thoughts are still unuttered and must so remain until eyes and ears and hands are quickened by a diviner life to a keener sensibility.

W.L. JUDSON, in _The Building of a Picture._

Another value in dialect is the fact that sounds are often retained that are lost in the standard speech, or softer, sweeter tones are fostered and developed.

JAMES MAIN DIXON, in _Dialect in Literature._

DECEMBER 17.

It is a compensation for many ills to awaken some December morning and feel in the air the warmth of summer and see in the foliage the glad green of spring. Children play in the parks, and the sun shines, and even the older folks grew merry. * * * It had been such a day as comes during Indian summer in other countries. The air had been very kindly and had breathed nothing but gentleness toward man and vegetation. Toward February people would be out searching for wild flowers on the suburban hills.

FRANCES CHARLES, in _The Siege of Youth._

DECEMBER 18.

FROM THE FRENCH.

How vain is life!
Love's little spell,
Hate's little strife,
And then--farewell!
How brief is life!
Hope's lessening light
With dreams is rife,
And then--good night!

BLANCHE M. BURBANK.

"Everyone for himself," is the law of the jungle. But slowly a new form of expression is shaping and we are beginning to take pride in the things that are "ours," rather than in that which alone is "mine."

DANA W. BARTLETT, in _Our Governtnert in Social Service, or a Nation at Work in Human Uplift._

DECEMBER 19.

"BACK THERE."

"Back there," the gambler-wind the snow is shuffling,
Flake after flake down--dealing in despair;
The bladeless field, the birdless thicket muffling,
But now no more the river's stillness ruffling.
Oh, bitter is the sky, and blank its stare--
Back there!

"Back there," the wires are down. The blizzard, meaning
No good to man or beast, shakes loose his hair.
The storm-bound train and locomotive preening
His sable plume, the ferry-boat, careening
Between the ice-cakes, icy fringes wear--
Back there!

TRACY and LUCY ROBINSON, in _Out West._

DECEMBER 20.

"OUT HERE."

"Out Here," a mocker trills his carol olden,
High-perched upon some eucalyptus near.
The meadow lark replies; oranges golden
Peer from the green wherewith they are enfolden,
And perfume fills the winey atmosphere--
Out Here!

"Out Here," through virgin soil, in sunlight mellow--
Ay, and in moonlight!--man his plow may steer,
Nor lose life's edge in friction with his fellow;
Nor, parchment-bound, with yellowing creeds turn yellow,
But feel his heart grow younger every year--
Out Here!

TRACY and LUCY ROBINSON, in _Out West._

DECEMBER 21.

HAPPY HEART.

As I go lightly on my way
I hear the flowers and grasses talk:
I listen to the gray-beard rock:
I know what 'tis the tree-tops say.
A thousand comrades with me walk
As I go lightly on my way.

As I go lightly on my way
A bonnie bird a greeting sings,
And gossip from a far clime brings;
A grumbling bee growls out "Good-day";
A jest the saucy chipmonk flings,
As I go lightly on my way.

As I go lightly on my way
The brook trips by with dancing feet,
And Song and Laughter soft repeat
Their cadence as I watch its play;
And whispers low the wind, and sweet,
As I go lightly on my way.

CHARLES E. JENNEY, in _Country Life in America, September_, 1902.

DECEMBER 22.

EUCALYPTUS BLOSSOMS.

I fell asleep beneath a fragrant
Arrow-leafed tree;
And all night long its drooping branches
Showered sweet dreams on me.
But when the dawn-wind stirred the tree tops
I saw, oh wondrous sight!
My dreams, pale spheres amid the leafage,
Ethereal, poised for flight.

MARGARET ADELAIDE WILSON, in _Out West Magazine._

DECEMBER 23.

TO MODJESKA.

Crowned with the glory of artistic achievement, with the love and devotion of friends and family, with the homage of the world, her royal yet sweet and gentle spirit has risen from the earth to shine above like a brilliant star, perpetually transmitting its pure white light to a reverently admiring multitude.

BERTHA HIRSCH BARUCH, _Inscribed on banner accompanying floral tribute of the Fine Arts League._

NIGHT ON THE DESERT.

All daylight he followed through endless hot marches
The trail of a plodding desire:
Now with night he has lost the fierce fever of getting,
Adrowse by his dull-embered fire.
Immeasurable silences compass him over,
His body grows one with the streams
Of sands that slide and whisper around him;
The stars draw his soul: and he dreams.

MARGARET ADELAIDE WILSON, in _Pall Mall Magazine._

DECEMBER 24.

CHRISTMAS.

The sun's glory lies on the mountain
Like the glow of a golden dream,
Or the flush on a slumbering fountain
That wakes to dawn's roseate beam.
So the year's day dies in a glory,
And dying, like sunrays unfurled,
Casts the peace and love of Christ's story
Over the heart of the world.

HAROLD T. SYMMES.

DECEMBER 25 AND 26.

THE NAZARINE.

A manger-cradled child, his mother near,
And one they call his father standing by,
Shepherd and Magi, with the gifts they bear,
An angel chorus rolling through the sky--
Once more the sacred mystery we scan,
And wonder if the Christ be God's best gift to man.

Pale, patient Pleader, for the poor and those
Whose hearts are homes of sorrow and of pain,
Thy voice is as a balm for all their woes;
Through twenty centuries it calleth plain
As when it breathed the invitation blest--
"Ye weary, come to Me, and I will give you rest."

Reason may seek to ruin, science scorn,
But that great love of Thine hath made us wise
In wisdom not of understanding born,
That bids us turn to Thee with longing eyes
And outstretched hands. We know that Thou art He.
Nor do we seek a sign as did the Pharisee.

Sweet festival that bringeth back once more
The golden dreams of childhood, let us turn
Like little children to the Christmas lore
That once did hold us spellbound, till we learn
Again the lesson of Thy love; for we
Must be like children, Lord, ere we can come to Thee.

LOUIS ALEXANDER ROBERTSON, in _Cloistral Strains._

DECEMBER 27.

MEMORIES.

I watched the dying embers, my vision blurred apace-- I trod once more that hallowed ground, of kith, of kin, of race. I saw again the turf-fire send its living flame on high, Saw youthful figures grouped around the Yule board, laden, nigh.

The latch went up, the neighbors came and instantly good cheer Went 'round the festive gathering 'till the Christ-child hour drew near, The piper played, the dance began, and child and parent fond Tripped back and forth, tripped high and low, with smile of loving bond.

ELLEN DWYER DONOVAN, in _The Christinas Card._

DECEMBER 28.

MOUNT SHASTA.

As lone as God, and white as Winter moon,
Mount Shasta's peak looks down on forest gloom.
The storm-tossed pines and warlike-looking firs
Have rallied here upon its silver spurs.
Eternal tower, majestic, great and strong,
So silent all, except for Heaven's song--
For Heaven's voice calls out through silver bars
To Shasta's height; calls out below the stars,
And speaks the way, as though but quarter rod
From Shasta's top unto its maker, God.

WILLIAM F. BURBANK.

DECEMBER 29 AND 30.

WHERE THE CREAMY YUCCA BLOOMS.

Say mate, I'm in the foothills;
Got a tent to sleep in nights,
Far away from beaten highways
And the talk of human rights;
Far away from din and tumult,
Where the greed of pelf consumes--
I've a corner, here, of heaven
Where the creamy yucca blooms.

God! the newborn sense of freedom!
Down in chain and bolt and bar,
Rent the vain that kept in hiding
Lore of sky and silver star.
Wisdom dwelleth not in cities;
'Tis the foothill night illumes--
Where the insects chant their hymnals,
And the creamy yucca blooms.

Get a move on, mate, come out here,
Leave the deadly fever-dreams
Of the street and of the market
Where the "rocky yellow" gleams.
Here you live in every moment,
And the soul its own assumes
In this blessed bit of heaven,
Where the creamy yucca blooms.

ELIZABETH BAKER BOHAN, in _West Coast Magazine._

DECEMBER 31.

ELECTRICITY ON THE COMSTOCK.

Born from nothing, it leaps into existence with the full-fledged strength of a giant, dies, is born again; lives a thousand lives and dies a thousand deaths in a single pulsating second of time.

It soars to every height, plunges to every depth, and stretches its vast arms throughout illimitable space.

It plants the first blush upon the cheek of dawn; with brush of gold upon the glowing canvas of the west, it tells the story of the dying day.