The celebration began with speaking from a grandstand built in front of the Baker Block, followed by a reception given to Mrs. Hayes and the ladies of the party in the parlors of the fashionable St. Elmo Hotel, still standing but now fallen to low estate.
After this the presidential party went to the county fair at the pavilion where there was more speaking, a public reception and a formal dinner. Dr. David Barrows contributes as his memory of this great occasion—the memory of a small boy who had been brought down from the Ojai Valley—his amazement to observe that Secretary Sherman kept his cigar in his mouth while making his address. It was during this speech that a little boy came forward bringing a great bouquet, the gift of the local florist, but suffered so from stage fright that he refused to mount the platform and my small sister, standing near, was substituted. She marched serenely across the stage, delivered the flowers to Mrs. Hayes, was kissed by her, then by the speaker, and final glory, by the President himself. I am sure it was the most lime-lighty moment of Nan’s modest life.
This bouquet was not the only gift we afforded our distinguished visitor. The other was a cup and saucer, fearfully and wonderfully made of sectors of red, white and blue cambric, stitched round and round until it was stiff by a little hole-in-the-wall sewing-machine agent.
After inspecting our fruits, vegetables, cookery, button strings and other fancy work the party was entertained at dinner by the leading women of Los Angeles in the improvised New England kitchen at the fair. The city council granted them the privilege and appropriated toward expense the generous sum of twenty-five dollars, all the council could afford toward banqueting the most distinguished party that had yet visited the City of the Queen of the Angels, so said Mayor Toberman. But every grower of fine turkeys or prize fruit or vegetables and every notable maker of preserves brought in offerings in kind so that in spite of the council’s thrift a most generous feast was spread before our guests.
Speaking of politics recalls the wonderful torchlight processions of a later period when I, with my cousins, shouting little Republicans, perched on the fence at their residence on the corner of Second and Broadway and delightedly recognized our fathers under the swinging, smoky lights.
I happened to be in Maine during the Blaine-Cleveland campaign and once rode upon a train to which Mr. Blaine’s special car was attached. It interested me to see that when he got out at one station for a hasty cup of coffee at a lunch counter, he poured the hot liquid into his saucer to drink. Was that doing politics, being one of the people, or was it simply that the mouth of a presidential candidate is as susceptible to heat as that of an ordinary mortal? I was much edified, as I was not accustomed to saucer-drinking. When the train reached Boston towards midnight, it was met by a most gorgeous torchlight parade and a blare of music.
When Garfield died, Los Angeles had a memorial service and a long daylight procession headed by a “Catafalque,” (a large float, gruesomely black), on which one of my schoolmates, Laura Chauvin, rode to represent, I suppose, a mourning angel. Later its black broadcloth draperies were used to make souvenirs and sold for some deserving cause. We purchased a pin-ball the size of a dollar, decorated with a green and white embroidered thistle,—a curious memento of a murdered president.
But I have been lured by memories of processions as is a small boy by martial music, away from my ordered account of where I have lived in Los Angeles. The second year we moved to the Shepherd house, (so-called because of its owner), where presently my brother, Llewellyn Bixby, junior, in direct answer to my prayers, came through the ceiling of the front bedroom straight into the apron of Mrs. Maitland,—a two-day-late birthday present for me. So I was told. My sceptical faculty was dormant.
This house still stands at the top of the precipice made by the cutting of First Street between Hill and Olive Streets.
The lot in front was very steep, with zig-zag paths and terraces, in one of which was a grove of banana trees, where fruit formed, but, owing to insufficient heat, never ripened well. Do you know the cool freshness of the furled, new, pale green leaves? Or how delightful it is to help the wind shred the old ones into fringe? One by one the red and gray covers for the circled blossoms drop, and make fetching little leather caps for playing children.