JUNE 16.
Mrs. Bryton surveyed the coarse furnishings of the adobe with disgust as she was led to the one room where she could secure sleeping accommodation. It contained three beds with as many different colored spreads, queer little pillows, and drawn-work on one towel hanging on a nail. The floor had once been tiled with square mission bricks; but many were broken, some were gone, and the empty spaces were so many traps for unwary feet.
MARAH ELLIS RYAN,
in For the Soul of Rafael.
JUNE 17.
Of all the old grandees who, not forty years before, had called the Californias their own; living a life of Arcadian magnificence, troubled by few cares, a life of riding over vast estates clad in silk and lace, botas and sombreros, mounted upon steeds as gorgeously caparisoned as themselves, eating, drinking, serenading at the gratings of beautiful women, gambling, horse-racing, taking part in splendid religious festivals, with only the languid excitement of an occasional war between rival governors to disturb the placid surface of their lives—of them all Don Roberto was a man of wealth and consequence today.
GERTRUDE ATHERTON,
in The Californians.
JUNE 18.
The house was a ruinous adobe in the old Mexican quarter of Los Angeles. The great, bare, whitewashed room contained only the altar and a long mirror in a tarnished gilt frame; one, the symbol of earthly vanity; the other, the very portal of heaven. All the carved mahogany furniture had long since gone to buy food and charcoal or a rare black gown.