In Memoriam
At the hour of high twelve on April the fourth, 1916, the sun shone into a room where lay the temporal abode, for eighty-one years and more, of the spirit of Harris Newmark. On his face still lingered that look of peace which betokens a life worthily used and gently relinquished.
Many were the duties allotted him in his pilgrimage; splendidly did he accomplish them! Providence permitted him the completion of his final task—a labor of love—but denied him the privilege of seeing it given to the community of his adoption.
To him and to her, by whose side he sleeps, may it be both monument and epitaph.
Thy will be done!
M. H. N.
M. R. N.
INTRODUCTION
Several times during his latter years my friend, Charles Dwight Willard, urged me to write out my recollections of the five or six decades I had already passed in Los Angeles, expressing his regret that many pioneers had carried from this world so much that might have been of interest to both the Angeleño of the present and the future historian of Southern California; but as I had always led an active life of business or travel, and had neither fitted myself for any sort of literary undertaking nor attempted one, I gave scant attention to the proposal. Mr. Willard's persistency, however, together with the prospect of coöperation offered me by my sons, finally overcame my reluctance and I determined to commence the work.