Immortal in thy land—our Golden West!
DORA CURETON,
in Sunset Magazine.
AUGUST 11.
THE PESSIMIST.
The pessimist leads us into a land of desolation. He makes for the sight blossoms of ugliness; for the smell repellant odors; for the taste bitterness and gall; for the hearing harsh discord, and death for the touch that is the only relief from a desert whose scrawny life lives but to distress us.
ABBOTT KINNEY,
in Tasks By Twilight.
The leaves of the wild gourd, lying in great star shaped patches on the ground, drooped on their stems, and the spikes of dusty white sage by the road hung limp at the ends, and filled the air with their wilted fragrance. The sea-breeze did not come up, and in its stead gusts of hot wind from the north swept through the valley as if from the door of a furnace.
MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM,
in Stories of the Foothills.