Driven before the churlish blast
Some in the meadow brook were cast,
Or fell in the tangle of the sedge;
Some were impaled on the thorn of the hedge;
But one was caught on my dear love's breast
Where long ago my heart found rest.
CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS,
in Overland Monthly, July, 1907.
APRIL 13.
For fifteen months the desert of California had lain athirst. The cattle of the vast ranges had fled from the parched sands, the dying, shriveled shrubs, appealing vainly, mutely, for rain, and had taken refuge in the mountains. They instinctively retreated from the death of the desert and sheltered themselves in the green of the foot-hills. North, east, south, and west, rain had fallen, but here, for miles on either side of the little isolated station ∗ ∗ ∗ the plain had so baked in the semi-tropical sun until even the hardiest sage-brush took on the color of the sand which billowed toward the eastern horizon like an untraveled ocean.