They were passing an orange-grove, and they entered a road bordered with scarlet geraniums that wound for a mile through eucalyptus trees, past artificial lakes where mauve water-lilies floated in the sun, and boats languorously invited occupants. Finally they came upon a smooth sward like that of an English park, embellished with huge date-palms, luxuriant magnolias, and regal banana-trees. Then they passed a brook tumbling in artificial cascades between banks thick with mossy ferns, and bright with blossoms. The children led their companion beneath fig and bay trees through an Italian garden; all of this splendid luxury of verdure had sprung from the desert as the result of a fortune patiently spent in irrigation.
MRS. FREMONT OLDER,
in The Giants.
JULY 19.
Some men have an eye for trees and an inborn sympathy with these rooted giants, as if the same sap ran in their own veins. To them trees have a personality quite as animals have, and, to be sure, there are "characters" among trees. I knew a solitary yellow pine which towered in the landscape, the last of its race. Its vast columnal trunk seemed to loom and expand as one approached. Always there was distant music in the boughs above, a noble strain descending from the clouds. Its song was more majestic than that of any other tree, and fell upon the listening ear with the far-off cadence of the surf, but sweeter and more lyrical, as if it might proceed from some celestial harp. Though there was not a breeze stirring below, this vast tree hummed its mighty song. Apparently its branches had penetrated to another world than this, some sphere of increasing melody.
C.H. KIRKHAM,
in In the Open.
JULY 20.
You will think the gentlemen were fine dandies in those Mexican days, when I tell you that they often wore crimson velvet knee trousers trimmed with gold lace, embroidered white shirts, bright green cloth or velvet jackets with rows and rows of silver buttons and red sashes with long streaming ends. Their wide-brimmed sombreros (hats) were trimmed with silver or gold braid and tassels. ∗ ∗ ∗ Each gentleman wore a large Spanish cloak of rich velvet or embroidered cloth, and if it rained, he threw over his fine clothes a serape, or square woolen blanket, with a slit cut in the middle for the head.
ELLA M. SEXTON,
in Stories of California.