“Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; may it be done to me according to Thy word.”
Thus kneeling, prayed these children of God. The silent summer lightning shone from the east to the west, and upon its light flew down from heaven a radiant host of winged angels, and hovered above their heads. Then they blended with the angels and were themselves as if angels, for upon earth there were no two souls more bright, more pure, more innocent.
ORSO.
The last days of autumn in Anaheim, a town situated in Southern California, are days of joy and celebration. The grape gathering is finished and the town is crowded with the vineyard hands. There is nothing more picturesque than the sight of these people, composed partly of a sprinkling of Mexicans, but mainly of Cahuilla Indians, who come from the wild mountains of San Bernardino to earn some money by gathering grapes. They scatter through the streets and market places, called lolas, where they sleep in tents or under the roof of the sky, which is always clear at this time of the year. This beautiful city, surrounded with its growths of eucalyptus, olive, castor, and pepper trees, is filled with the noisy confusion of a fair, which strangely contrasts with the deep and solemn silence of the plains, covered with cacti, just beyond the vineyards. In the evening, when the sun hides his radiant head in the depths of the ocean, and upon the rosy sky are seen in its light the equally rosy-tinted wings of the wild geese, ducks, pelicans and cranes, descending by the thousands from the mountains to the ocean, then in the town the lights are lit and the evening amusements begin. The negro minstrels play on bones, and by the campfires can be heard the picking of the banjo; the Mexicans dance on an out-spread poncha their favorite bolero; Indians join in the dance, holding in their teeth long white sticks of kiotte, or beating time with their hands, and exclaiming, “E viva;” the fires, fed with redwood, crackle as they blaze, sending up clouds of bright sparks, and by its reflection can be seen the dancing figures, and around them the local settlers with their comely wives and sisters watching the scene.
The day on which the juice from the last bunch of grapes is trampled out by the feet of the Indians is generally celebrated by the advent of Hirsch’s Circus, from Los Angeles. The proprietor of the circus is a German, and besides owns a menagerie composed of monkeys, jaguars, pumas, African lions, one elephant, and several parrots, childish with age—“The greatest attraction of the world.” The Cahuilla will give his last peso, if he has not spent it on drink, to see not only wild animals—for these abound in the San Bernardino Mountains—but to see the circus girls, athletes, clowns, and all its wonders, which seem to him as “a great medicine”—that is, magical feats, impossible of accomplishment except by the aid of supernatural powers.
Mr. Hirsch, the proprietor of the circus, would be very angry with any one who would dare to say that his circus only attracted Mexicans, Indians, and Chinese. Certainly not; the arrival of the circus brings hither not only the people of the town and vicinity, but even those of the neighboring towns of Westminster, Orange, and Los Nietos. Orange Street is crowded with buggies and wagons of divers shapes, so that it is difficult to get through. The whole world of settlers come as one man. Young, bright girls, with their hair prettily banged over their eyes, sitting on the front seats, drive some of these vehicles, and gracefully upset passing pedestrians, chatter and show their white teeth; the Spanish senoritas from Los Nietos cover you with their warm, ardent glances from under their lace mantillas; the married women from the country, dressed in their latest and best fashions, lean with pride on the arms of the sunburned farmers, who are dressed in old hats, jean pants, and flannel shirts, fastened with hook and eye, and without neckties.
All these people meet and greet each other, gossip, and the women inspect with critical eye the dresses of their neighbors, to see if they are “very fashionable.”
Among the buggies are some covered with flowers, which look like huge bouquets; the young men, mounted on mustangs, bend from their high Mexican saddles and peer under the hats of the young girls; the half-wild horses, frightened by the noise and confusion, look here and there with their bloodshot eyes, curvet, rear, and try to unseat their riders, but the cool riders seem to pay no attention to them.