“ When there's just enough of frostiness a sense of life to give,
Right here in California it's a comfort just to live.
Out here in California in the January days
The soul of nature seems to sing a jubilee of praise,
And the songbirds whistle clearer, and the blossoms are more fair,
And someway joy and blessing seem about us in the air.
It's cold perhaps off yonder, but we never feel it here,
For the seasons run together through a Summer-haunted year,
And Dame Nature in her bounty leaves us nothing to forgive
Right here in California, where it's comfort just to live. ”

“ PALMER COX,
in The Brownies Through California.
JULY 31.
ROSEMARY.
Indian summer has gone with its beautiful moon.
And all the sweet roses I gathered in June
Are faded. It may be the cloud-sylphs of Even
Have stolen the tints of those roses for Heaven.
O bonnie bright blossom! in the years far away.
So evanished thy bloom on an evening in May.
The sunlight now sleeps in the lap of the west,
And the star-beams are barring its chamber of rest.
While Twilight is weaving her blue-tinted bowers
To mellow the landscape where slumber the flowers. ”

“ A peninsula which to the Spanish conquistadores was an island glistening in the azure web of romance; a land for which the padres gave their lives in fanatic devotion to the Cross; a land rich in history, when the timbers of the Mayflower were yet trees in the forest. Lower California, once sought and guarded for her ores and her jewels, now a veritable terra incognita, slumbering, unnoticed, at the feet of her courted child, the great State of California. Lower California, her romance nigh forgotten, her possibilities overlooked by enterprise and by the statesmen of the two republics. ”

“ It comes upon one with new force that the Chaldeans were a desert-bred people. It is hard to escape the sense of mastery as the stars move in the wide, clear heavens to risings and settings unobscured. They look large and near and palpitant; as if they moved on some stately service not needful to declare. Wheeling to their stations in the sky, they make the poor world fret of no account. Of no account you who lie out there watching, nor the lean coyote that stands off in the scrub from you and howls and howls. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The coast is saturated for some distance inland with this presence of the sea, much as the beach is soaked with salt water. It is music and poetry to the soul and as elusive as they, wrapping us in dreams and yielding fugitive glimpses of that which we may never grasp, but which skirts, like a beautiful phantom, the mind's horizon. Like music, it is an opiate, and unlocks for us new states of mind in which we wander, as in halls of alabaster and mother-of-pearl, but where, alas, we may not linger. We can as readily sound the ocean as fathom the feelings it inspires. ”

“ You rode three miles on the flat, two in the leafy and gradually ascending creek-bed of a canyon, a half hour of laboring steepness in the overarching mountain lilac and laurel. There you came to a great rock gateway which seemed the top of the world. * * * Beyond the gateway a lush level canyon into which you plunged as into a bath; then again the laboring trail, up and always up toward the blue California sky, out of the lilacs, and laurels, and redwood chaparral into the manzanita, the Spanish bayonet, the creamy yucca, and the fine angular shale of the upper regions. ”

“ San Francisco the Impossible. The City of Miracles! Of it and its people many stories have been told, and many shall be; but a thousand tales shall not exhaust its treasury of romance. Earthquake and fire shall not change it, terror and suffering shall not break its glad, mad spirit. Time alone can tame the town, restrain its wanton manners, refine its terrible beauty, rob it of its nameless charm, subdue it to the commonplace. May time be merciful—may it delay its fatal duty till we have learned that to love, to forgive, to enjoy, is but to understand! ”

“ Thy wraith of pearl, wall, minaret and spire,
Framed in the mists that veil thy Gate of Gold,
Lost city of my love and my desire.
INA D. COOLBRITH.
APRIL 29.
The cataclysmal force to which we owe
Our glorious Gate of Gold, through which the sea
Rushed in to clasp these shores long, long ago,
Came once again to crown our destiny
With such a grandeur that in sequent years
This period of pain which now appears
Pregnant with doubt, shall vanish as when day
Drives the foreboding dreams of night away. ”

“ THE SENTINEL TREE.
(CYPRESS POINT, CALIFORNIA.)
A giant sentinel, alone it stands
On rocky headland where the breakers roar,
Parted from piny woods and pebbled shore.
Holding out branches as imploring hands.
Poor lonely tree, where never bird doth make
Its nest, or sing at morn and eve to thee,
Nor in whose shadow wild rose calleth bee
To come on gauzy wing for love's sweet sake.
Nature cares for thee, gives thee sunshine gold,
Handfuls of pearls cast from the crested waves,
For thee pink-throated shells soft murmurs hold,
And seaweed vested chorists chant in caves. ”

“ JOHN MUIR,
in The Mountains of California.
OCTOBER 10.
Who can hear the wild song of the ouzel and not feel an answering thrill? Perched upon a rock in the midst of the rapids, he is the incarnation of all that is untamed, a wild spirit of the mountain stream, as free as a raindrop or a sunbeam. How solitary he is, a lone little bird, flitting from rock to rock through the desolate gorge, like some spirit in a Stygian world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Away to the south, on its borders, were hills of purple, each reflected as clearly as though photographed, and still beyond rose the caps and summits of other peaks and mountains rising from this inland sea, whose waters were of turquoise; yet, as we moved down the slope, the lake was always stealing on before. It was of the things dreams are made of, that has driven men mad and to despair, its bed a level floor of alkali and clay, covered with a dry, impalpable dust that the slightest wind tossed and whirled in air.
CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER,
in Life in the Open. ”

“ Because we have such faith in the charms of California; because we have such faith in the future of our city that we believe that once strangers come here they will remain in it, as of old the hero remained in the land of the ever-young; because we believe that this state can support ten, aye, twenty times its present population, we extend an invitation to all home-seekers, no matter where found. Come to California! Its valleys are wide open for all to come through and build therein their homes of peace. Its coasts teem with wealth. The riches of its mountains have not been half exploited. ”

“ San Francisco is not the back door of the continent. San Francisco is the front door. Every ship sailing out of its magnificent bay to the Orient, proclaims this fact. San Francisco will one day lead the continent. A city that cares for its poor and helpless, its children and dumb animals, that encourages art and learning, and never wearies in its prosecution of evil-doers—that city will eventually emerge triumphant from every cloud of evil report. Long live the dear city by the Golden Gate! ”

“ The California condor, the largest of all flying birds, is found only on this coast and only in the southern half of that, although an occasional specimen has been seen in the high Sierra Neveda. Of all the sailing or soaring birds he is the most graceful and wonderful, drifting to and fro, up and down, right or left, in straight lines or curves, for hours at a time, darting like an arrow or hanging still in air with equal ease on that motionless wing whose power puzzles all philosophy. ”

“ MORNING.
A smooth, smooth sea of gray, gray glass;
An open sea, where big ships pass
Into the sun;
A boat-dotted harbor; gulls, wheeling and screaming,
And surf-song and fisher-cry end our night's dreaming.
Day has begun.
EVENING.
A broken sea of rosy jade;
A rose-pink sky; black ships that fade
Into the night;
Across the bay, the city seems
But elfin music, drowsy dreams
And silver light!
OLIVE PERCIVAL.
OCTOBER 17.
SUNSET IN SAN DIEGO.
The city sits amid her palms ”

“ Our Southland bushes ever love to climb.
JAMES MAIN DIXON,
in My Garden.
How bright the world looked, to be sure; flowers covered the earth, not scattered in niggardly manner as in the older, colder Eastern states, but covering the earth for miles, showing nothing but a sea of blue, an ocean of crimson, or a wilderness of yellow. Then came patches where all shades and colors were mixed; delicate tints of pink and mauve, of pure white and deep red, and over all floated a fragrance that was never equaled by garden-flowers or their distilled perfume. ”

“ To those who know the desert's heart, and through years of closest intimacy—have learned to love it in all its moods; it has for them something that is greater than charm, more lasting than beauty a something to which no man can give a name. Speech is not needed, for they who are elect to love these things understand one another without words; and the desert speaks to them through its silence. ”

“ And yesterday, where stood the glittering spire, the shining tower, the frowning battlement, today the cold gray ocean rolls in undisputed might.
It gathers the doings of the day from the four corners of the world, the tales of love and death, of fire and flood, of strife and pestilence, and under eight thousand miles of shivering sea, whispers the babble of two hemispheres.
It turns the wheels of peace where poor men toil, and helps the husbandman to plow and plant and reap his whispering grain.
It rides the wings of war where brave men die ”

“ This is a difficult universe to the man who drives dead against it, but to the man who has learned the secret of harmony through obedience it is a happy place. Discord is sickness; harmony is health. Discord is restlessness; harmony is peace. Discord is sorrow; harmony is joy. Discord is death; harmony is life. Discord is hell; harmony is heaven. He who is in love and peace with his neighbors, filling the sphere where God has placed him, hath heaven in his heart already. Only through blue in the eye, the scientist tells us, can blue out of the eye be seen. ”

“ How we all love a city that we have once contemplated making our home! Such a city to me is San Francisco, and but for unavoidable duties elsewhere, I would be there today. I loved that bright, beautiful city, and even the mention of its name sends my blood bounding more quickly through my veins. That might have been my city, and I therefore rejoice in its prosperity. I am distressed when calamity overtakes it—I never lose faith in its ultimate success. The heart of the city is sound. ”

“ FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOPS, LOOKING TOWARDS SAN FRANCISCO BAY.
From the mountain tops we see the valleys stretching out for leagues below. The eye travels over the tilled fields and the blossoming orchards, through the tall trees and along the verdant meadows that are watered by the mountain streams. Beyond the valley rolls the ocean, whereon we see the armored vessels, and the pleasure yachts, and the merchant ships, laden with the grain of our golden shores, sailing under every flag that floats the sea. ”

“ It rouses nature from her winter sleep, breaks the icy fetters of the frost that binds the streams, lifts the shroud of snow from off the landscape, woos the tender mold and bids the birth of bud and blossom; dowers the flower with perfume and clothes the earth with verdure of the spring.
It rides the swift courses of the storms that circle round the bald crest of old Mount Davidson; cleaves the black curtain of the night with scimitar of flame; rouses the lightnings from their couch of clouds and wakes the earthquake. ”

“ Here was our first (and still largest) national romance, the first wild-flower of mystery, the first fierce passion of an uncommonly hard-fisted youth. To this day it persists the only glamour between the covers of our geography. For more than fifty years its only name has been a witchcraft, and its spell is stronger now than ever, as shall be coolly demonstrated. This has meant something in the psychology of so unfanciful a race. The flowering of imagination is no trivial incident, whether in one farm boy's life or in a people's. ”

“ And from under your very feet rose range after range, tier after tier, rank after rank, in increasing crescendo of wonderful tinted mountains to the main crest of the Coast Range, the blue distance, the mightiness of California's western systems. ∗ ∗ ∗ And in the far distance, finally, your soul grown big in a moment, came to rest on the great precipices and pines of the greatest mountains of all, close under the sky. ”

“ Around the Southern Californian home of the loving twain the roses are in perpetual bloom. The vines are laden with clustered grapes, the peach and the apricot trees bend under their loads of luscious fruit, the milch cows yield their creamy milk, the honey-bees laying in their stores of sweet spoil, the balmy air breathes fragrance, the drowsy hum of life is the music of peace. ”

“ Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so far that life and death are not before you. Painted lizards slip in and out of rock crevices, and pant on the white-hot sands. Birds, humming-birds even, nest in the cactus scrub; woodpeckers befriend the demoniac yuccas; out of the stark, treeless waste rings the music of the night-singing mocking bird. If it be summer and the sun well down, there will be a burrowing owl to call. ”