A battle of eighty years with the world cannot, in the nature of human affairs, leave any man or woman unscarred; but I have learned many things, and among them the consolations of philosophy. It would be presumption on my part to make complaint against the inscrutable decrees of that Providence which guides the destinies of us all; I dwell, rather, on the manifold blessings which have been my lot in this life—the decision of Fate which cast my lines in the pleasant places of Southern California; the numerous excellent and estimable friends whom I have met on life's highway; the many years of happiness vouchsafed me to enjoy; and, finally, whatever degree of success has attended my more serious efforts.
When I came, Los Angeles was a sleepy, ambitionless adobe village with very little promise for the future. The messenger of Optimism was deemed a dreamer; but time has more than realized the fantasies of those old village oracles, and what they said would some day come to pass in Los Angeles, has come and gone, to be succeeded by things much greater still. We possessed however, even in that distant day, one asset, intangible it is true, but as invaluable as it was intangible—the spirit popularly called "Western," but which, after all, was largely the pith of transferred Eastern enterprise. This characteristic seized upon a vast wilderness—the same which Daniel Webster declared, in the Senate of the United States, unworthy of membership in the sisterhood of States; and within this extensive area it builded great cities, joined its various parts with steel and iron, made great highways out of the once well-nigh impassable cattle-paths, and from an elemental existence developed a complex civilization. Nor is there to-day in all this region a greater or finer city than fair Los Angeles.
Many of us saw it grow; none of us foresaw that growth, even from decade to decade.
"Westward the course of empire takes its way." When Bishop Berkeley so poetically proclaimed this historic truth, even he could hardly have had in mind the shores of the Pacific; but here we have an empire, and one whose future is glorious. This flourishing city stands, in fact, with its half million or more human beings and its metropolitan activities, at the threshold of a new era. The operations of Nature change so slowly as to show almost no change at all: the Southern California of the coming years will still possess her green hills and vales, her life-giving soil, her fruits, flowers and grain, and the same sun will shine upon her with the same generous warmth, out of the same blue sky, as ever. The affairs of men, on the other hand, change rapidly. After gigantic labor initiated but ten short years ago, the Panamá Canal is dedicated to the use of mankind, and through its crowded waters will come the ships of every nation, bringing to the marts of Los Angeles choice products to be exchanged for our own. For this and other reasons, I believe that Los Angeles is destined to become, in not many years, a world-center, prominent in almost every field of human endeavor; and that, as nineteen hundred years ago the humblest Roman, wherever he might find himself, would glow with pride when he said, "I am a Roman!" so, in the years to come, will the son of the metropolis on these shores, wheresoever his travels may take him, be proud to declare,
"I AM A CITIZEN OF LOS ANGELES!"
INDEX
A
Abalones, [427]; shells as jewelry, [261]; gatherer trapped, [428]
Abarca, Luis (Louis), [63]