When we left San Diego and all along the ocean the weather was deliciously cool, but as we went inland toward Pasadena it became hotter than anything you can imagine. It was a case of 116° in the shade and there wasn’t any shade!
“How can the orange-trees remain so beautifully green?” I heard Celia muttering. Twenty miles north of Los Angeles I looked at the unburnt hills and crisply standing live-oaks in wonder and amazement. I could actually see blisters forming on E. M.’s nose. Finally we panted up a big winding hill, a branch of the Coast Range of mountains, I suppose it was, and as we dipped over on the other side, such a gust of cold sea wind greeted us that in five minutes, we, who had been gasping like dying fish, were wrapping our now shivering selves in coats!
Under Santa Barbara Skies
Besides the life-giving coolness of the sea air, never, never was there a more beautiful drive than the one to Santa Barbara. Not the Cornici of France—not even the Sorrento to Amalfi of Italy. Mountains on one side, the ocean on the other, curving in and out of bays each more lovely than the last, and on a road like linoleum. I thought I should like to live where I could drive up and down that road forever!
CHAPTER XXVI
THE LAND OF GLADNESS
Light-hearted, happy, basking in the sunshine, her eyes not dreamily gazing into the past, nor avariciously peering into the future, but dancing with the joy of today—such is California! It is not only the sun of heaven shining upon California that makes her the garden-land of the world, but the sun radiating from the hearts of her people. Golden she certainly is—land of golden fruit, land of golden plenty, daughter of the golden sun.
If you have millions and want to learn a million ways to spend them; if you are a social climber and want to scale the Western Hemisphere’s most polished pinnacle; if you want to become worldly, cynical, effete, go to New York. New York is the princess of impersonality, the queen of indifference. Your riches do not impress her; without any, you do not exist. You can come or go, sink or swim, be brilliant, beautiful or charming, she cares not a whit. “What new extravagance do you bring to amuse me?” she asks, bored even before she has finished asking.
“What are you ambitious to do?” asks Chicago. “What are you trying to be? Can I help you?”