Julia M. Sloane

“ We sit on our terrace feeling as if we were in a proscenium box on the edge of the world, and watch the [Pg 7] ever-varying splendor. At night there is the same sense of infinity, with the unclouded stars above, and only the twinkling lights of motors threading their way down the zigzag of the coast road as it descends the cliffs to the plain below us. These lights make up in part for the fewness of the harbor lights in the bay. The Pacific is a lonely ocean. There are so few harbors along the coast where small boats can find shelter that yachts and pleasure craft hardly exist. ”

“ The coast road to San Diego runs through orange groves for miles, and the perfume of the blossoms [Pg 97] hung about us till we came to the sea, where a salt breeze blew away the heavy sweetness. I lunched on the sand and watched the waves for an hour. There, at least, are endless re-enforcements! As fast as the front ranks break more come always to fill their places. ”

“ What amazes them always is to find that Southern California has the most perfect summer [Pg 88] climate in the world, if you keep near the sea. No rain—many are the umbrellas I have gently extracted from the reluctant hands of doubting visitors; no heat such as we know it in the East. We have an out-of-door dining-room, and it is only two or three times in summer that it is warm enough to have our meals there. In the cities or the "back country" it is different. I have felt heat in Pasadena that made me feel in the same class with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, but never by the sea. ”

“ I have a very profound respect for the elements since we have come West to live. A forest fire is [Pg 185] even more terrifying than a flood, and in spite of the eagle eyes of the foresters many are the lovely green slopes burned over each year. I have seen a brush fire marching over a hill across the canyon from us, like an army with banners—flying our colors of orange and yellow—driving terrified rabbits and snakes ahead of it, and fought with the fervor of Crusaders by the property owners in its path. ”

“ It is a most enchanting spot. A red-tiled bungalow is built about a courtyard with cloisters and a fountain, while vines and flowers fill the air with the most delicious perfume of heliotrope, mignonette, and jasmine. Beyond the big living-room extends a terrace with boxes of deep and pale pink geraniums against a blue sea, that might be the Bay of Naples, except that Vesuvius is lacking. ”

“ Trees there are few, the graceful silhouette of a eucalyptus against a golden sky, occasional clumps of live oaks, and on the coast road to San Diego the Torry pines, relics of a bygone age, growing but one other place in the world, and more picturesque than any tree I ever saw. One swaying over a canyon is the photographer's joy. ”

“ One summer, lying in bed in a hospital where the heat was terrific, I found myself repeating over and over:
"Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting, Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,"
and finding it far more cooling than iced orange juice. Was not I proving Banksleigh's contention? I was thinking cool and I was cool. In his own case New Thought seemed to work. He always looked ready to give up forever, and yet he never did.
California is full of people with queer quirks and they aren't confined to gardeners. ”

“ As to the real-estate men, they are more in number than the sands of the sea, and the competition is razor-edged. If you have the dimmest idea of ever buying a lot or house, or if you are comfortably without principle, you won't need to keep a motor at all. The real-estate men will see that you get lots of fresh air, and they are most obliging about letting you do your marketing on the way home. ”

“ Everything is called an adventure nowadays, and to me it was a most exciting one, as I had not gone forth independently for many years. One chauffeur, one smiling Helen to clean house for the tenants and cook for me, my worst clothes and my best picnic lunch went into the motor, and I followed. ”

“ The war has made me dislike anything about the place that isn't really in use. Having lived some years in Pennsylvania, and having amassed quite a collection of antique mahogany furniture, I felt justified in thinning out a few tables and odd pieces that our desirable bungalow is too small to hold. The results weren't as pronounced as before, but they quite repaid me. I sold my best table to a general, which gave me a lot of confidence, but my greatest triumph was a hat-rack. It was a barren, gaunt-looking affair, like a leafless tree in winter, but it was mahogany, and it was old. ”

“ Japanese women are so smiling and pleasant, with their "Good-by, come gen," the melons are so luscious, the eternal strawberry so ripe and red, the orange blossom honey so delectable, and everything is so cheap compared to what we had been used to in the East! I think that in San Diego one can live better on a small income than anywhere in the country. ”

“ The reactions of more or less temperamental people, suddenly transplanted from a rigorous climate to sunshine and the beauty and abundance of life in Southern California, perhaps give a too highly colored picture, so please make allowance for the bounce of the ball. I mean to be quite fair. It doesn't rain from May to October, but when it does, it can rain in a way to make Noah feel entirely at home. Unfortunately, that is when so many of our visitors come—in February! They catch bad colds, the roses aren't in bloom, and altogether they feel that they have been basely deceived. ”

“ No one should attempt to live on top of an adobe hill one mile from a small town which has been brought up on the Declaration of Independence, without previously taking a course in plain and fancy wheedling. ”

“ One result of all this fresh air is that we won't even go indoors to be amused. Hence the outdoor theatre. Why go to a play when it's so lovely outside? But to go to a play out-of-doors in an enchanting Greek theatre with a real moon rising above it—that's another matter. ”

“ The company is composed of one minister with such an angelic expression that no one can refuse to sign anything if he holds out [Pg 27] a pen; one aviator with youth, exuberant spirits, and a New England setness of purpose; one schoolmaster—strong on facing facts and callous to camouflage, and one temperamental cheese man. (It turned out afterward, however, that the janitor could make the best cheese of them all.) Developing a cheese business is a good deal like conducting a love affair—it blows hot and cold in a nerve-racking way. ”

“ I was saying what a pity it was, then Joedy observed: "Well, Muvs, I think she makes a nice bright spot of color!"
There is a road leading toward the San Fernando Valley, with fruit stalls on both sides, very gay with oranges, grape-fruit, and lemons. One particularly alluring stand is presided over by a colored mammy in bandana shades, turban and all.
All this profusion makes one feel that it is no trick to get a living out of this very impulsive soil, but before buying a plot of one's own, it is wise to see the seasons through. California is a very unexpected country. ”

“ California has temperament, and it is still very young and enthusiastic and is having a lot of fun "growing up." I love the stone walls, huckleberry pies, and johnny cakes of Rhode Island, and I love the associations of my childhood and my family tree, but there is something in the air of this part of the world that enchants me. ”

“ It seems almost too good to be true, that in a perfect Italian setting we should have stumbled on an Italian gardener, who whistles Verdi as he works. True, he doesn't know the flowers by name, and in his hands a pair of clippers are as fatal as the shears in the hands of Atropos, but he is in the picture. When I see gardeners pruning I realize that that lady of destiny shows wonderful restraint about our threads of fate—the temptation to snip seems so irresistible. ”

“ We often meet them bowling gayly along the boulevards, the motor hearse maintaining a lively pace, which the mourners are expected to follow. The nearest J—— ever came to an accident was suddenly meeting one on the wrong side of the road, and the funeral chauffeur's language was not any more scriptural than J——'s. As we were nowhere near eighty, we felt we had a lot of life still coming to us and gave grateful thanks for our escape.
Life is a good thing. I maintain it in the face of pessimists, but it is a particularly good thing in California, with its sunshine and its possibilities. ”

“ I don't pretend to know all the ills the orange is heir to. Sometimes it grows too fat and juicy and cracks its skin, and sometimes it is attacked by scale. Every tree has to be swathed in a voluminous sheet and fumigated once a year at great expense. After living out here some time, I began to understand why even in the heart of the orange country we sometimes pay fifty cents a dozen for the large fruit. ”

“ It would even take the curse off being a lemon to be a "Sunkist" lemon. It contains no hint of the perilous early life of an orange. Truly that life is more chancey than an aviator's. They say that in the good old days there were no frosts, but that irrigation is gradually changing the climate of Southern California. We would not dare to express an opinion on this much discussed point, as we have never gone to any new place where the climate has been able to stand the shock. It is always an unusual season. ”

“ I had heard that every one deteriorated in Southern California, and after the first year I began earnestly searching my soul for signs of slackening. Perhaps my soul is naturally easy-going, for somehow I can't feel that the things we let slip matter so greatly. ”

“ There is a place on the beach by the coast road between Pasadena and San Diego where we always have lunch on our journeys to and from town. Just after you leave the picturesque ruins of the Capistrano Mission in its sheltered valley, you come out suddenly on the ocean, and the road runs by the sand for miles. With a salt breeze blowing in your face you can't resist the lunch box long. With a stuffed [Pg 82] egg in one hand and a sandwich in the other, Joedy, aged eight, observed on our last trip south, "This is the bright side of living." ”

“ There was a trace of embarrassment in his manner, but there was none in mine as I led him to the cellar and watched with satisfaction while he clasped a cobwebby box of—dare I whisper it?—empty beer bottles to his immaculate chest and eventually stowed it in the exquisite interior of the limousine. How wonderful of the Red Cross to want my bottles, and how intelligent of my "little boy" to arrange the matter so pleasantly!
To do away with the needless accumulations of life, or better still, not to let them accumulate, what a comfort that would be! Letters? The fire as rapidly as possible! ”

“ We can make geraniums grow luxuriantly, but we don't want to. I wish they would pass a law in Southern California making the growing of red geraniums a criminal offense. So many people love to combine them with bougainvillia and other brilliant pink or purple flowers, and the light is hard enough on eyes without adding that [Pg 51] horror. We are resolved to progress from the geranium age to the hardy perennial class, and are industriously studying books and magazines with that end in view. The worst of garden literature is that it is nearly all written for an Eastern climate. ”

“ It is so lovely that after three years it still seems like a dream. We are only one short look from the Pacific Ocean, that ocean into whose mists the sun sets in flaming purple and gold, or the more soft tones of shimmering gray and shell-pink. ”

“ I told him that all our conditions here are so different from those in the East. People want Italian and Spanish gardens, and there is the most marvellous choice of flowers, shrubs, and vines with which to [Pg 52] get them, but we want to be told how, and added to this, it is heart-breaking to love a fountain nymph in the advertisements and to find that her travelling expenses would bankrupt you.
One marvellous opportunity we have—the San Diego Exposition, whose gardens are more lovely than ever, though soldiers and sailors are feeding the pigeons in the Plaza de Panama instead of tourists. ”

“ I frankly own that they would thrill me more if I knew their market price, so that I might be imagining what delightful meals I could offer my family without straining the household purse, which is my excuse for the intimate details concerning food and prices which I have given.
Surely human beings ought to respond [Pg 189] as the fruits do to this climate, in spirit as well as in body, and become a very mellow, amiable, sweet-tempered lot of people, and I think they do. Even the "culls" are almost as good as the rest, though they won't bear transportation. ”

“ Life for many consists largely of a prolonged bath and bask on the beach, [Pg 80] with dinner at a cafeteria and a cold bite for supper at home or on the rocks. It is surely an easy life and yet a great deal of earnest effort and strenuous thinking goes on, too, women's clubs, even an "open forum," and there are many delightful people who live there all the year for the sake of the perfect climate. ”

“ He has been serving us with milk ever since, and I'd like to testify that his heart is in the right place.
Before I leave the subject of wheedling, I might add that if it is a useful art in summer, in winter it is priceless. After a week of rain, such as we know how to have in these parts, adobe becomes very slippery. This hill is steep, and I have spent a week on its top in February, feeling like the princess in the fairy tale, who lived on a glass hill ready to marry the first suitor who reached the top ”

“ Our California color scheme is the very latest thing in decorative art. There is nothing shrinking about us, for we come boldly forth in orange and yellows in true cigar-ribbon style—even our motor licenses of last year had poppies on them. Speaking of poppies, I heard the other day of a lady who voiced her opinion in all seriousness in the paper, that Mr. Hoover should have California poppy seeds sent to him for distribution among the Belgians to sow over the ruins of their country. ”