The last letter received by me from New Hampshire, April 3d, begins in this way: "It is like the middle of winter here, good sleighing and still very cold." And then comes a sad series of announcements of sickness and deaths caused by the protracted rigors of the season. And here, at the same date, all the glories of the spring, which far exceeds our summer—Spanish breezes, Italian sky and sunsets, Alpine mountains, tropical luxuriance of vegetation, a nearly uniform climate, a big outdoor conservatory. There is no other place on earth that combines so much in the same limits. You can snowball your companions on Christmas morning on the mountain-top, pelt your lady friends with rose leaves in the foot-hills three hours later, and in another sixty minutes dip in the surf no cooler than Newport in July; and the theatre in the evening. As a bright workman said, you can freeze through and thaw out in one day.
An electric railroad will soon connect Los Angeles with Pasadena and Mount Wilson, and a fine hotel is to be placed on the top of Echo Mountain, 3500 feet high, and this will then certainly be the ideal health and pleasure resort of the world.
Pasadena's homes, protected on three sides by mountain ranges, are surrounded by groves and gardens, trees and hedges from every clime. Everything will grow and flourish here. Capitalists from the East seem engaged in a generous rivalry to create the ideal paradise. Passion vines completely cover the arbors, roses clamber to the tops of houses and blossom by tens of thousands. I notice displays fit for a floral show in the windows of butcher shops and shoe stores. The churches are adorned with a mantle of vines and flowers.
Are there no "outs," no defects in this Pasadena? One must not forget the rainy days, the occasional "hot spells" of August and September, a wind now and then that blows off steeples and tears down fragile structures, bringing along a good deal more sand than is wanted. And every year an earthquake may be expected. I have experienced two, and they are not agreeable.
Aside from these drawbacks and dust in summer, all else is perfection, except that the weather is so uniformly glorious that there is seldom a day when one is willing to stay at home. I feel just now like a "deestrick" schoolboy who has been "kept in" on a summer afternoon.
The wild-flowers are more fascinating to me than all those so profusely cultivated. I weary of five thousand calla-lilies in one church at Easter, and lose a little interest in roses when they bloom perennially and in such profusion that I have had enough given me in one morning to fill a wash-tub or clothes-basket!
The wealth of color on the hills and mesas in springtime can never be described or painted. The State flower, the yellow poppy with the name that would floor any spelling-match hero—the eschscholtzia—is most conspicuous, and can be seen far away at sea; but there are dozens of others, that it is better to admire and leave unplucked, as they wilt so soon. "The ground is literally dolly-vardened with buttercups, violets, dodecatheons, gilias, nemophilas, and the like. And yet these are the mere skirmish line of the mighty invading hosts, whose uniforms surpass the kingly robes of Solomon, and whose banners of crimson and yellow and purple will soon wave on every hilltop and in every valley.
"In April and May the lover of nature may pass into the seventh heaven of botanical delight. Then in favored sections the display reaches a gorgeousness and a profusion that surpass both description and imagination."
No one can paint the grain fields as they look when the sun puts into every blade a tiny golden ray and it is no longer every-day common grain, but an enchanted carpet of living, radiant, golden green. We tourists call it grass, but there is no grass to be proud of in California.
No one can paint the sky; no one would accept it as true to nature if once caught on the canvas.