CALIFORNIA.
PALMA COGLIANDRO (4 YEARS OF AGE), AN ORPHAN, BROUGHT FROM MESSINA AND DELIVERED TO HER UNCLE IN SAN FRANCISCO BY THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.
Mr. Steinmetz, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Branch, who has lately been in California, writes: “It was my desire to study carefully the design of the wood houses issued to the refugees. Mr. Dohman very kindly put me in the hands of Mr. McLaren, Superintendent of the Golden Gate Park, and I went with him in his automobile, accompanied by one of the active workers of their Organized Charities, and visited a great many of the little houses. These wooden houses have been carried away to different permanent sites, where they now form the permanent homes of their owners. As a rule they have been somewhat rebuilt, have been raised off of the ground, front porches and rear kitchens added, and they have been shingled and painted and set in the midst of gardens of blooming plants and shrubs, forming beautiful little suburban homes in which anyone would be content and happy. The woodwork, as far as I observed, was in a good state of preservation. There does not seem to be any rotting of the sills, the roofs seemed taut and, altogether, the wisdom of issuing these houses has more than been proved, showing that really your Central Committee builded better than it knew.”
Palma Cogliandro, the little girl who was brought from Italy by the Red Cross, and who, during an attack of measles, was most kindly cared for by officers of the Massachusetts Red Cross, has safely reached her destination and is with her uncle in California.