The California Birthday Book Part 21

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Mission Tales in the Days of the Dons._

JUNE 8.

JUNE. (IN CALIFORNIA.)

Oh June! thou comest once again With bales of hay and sheaves of grain, That make the farmer's heart rejoice, And anxious herds lift up their voice.

I hear thy promise, sunny maid, Sound in the reapers' ringing blade.

And in the laden harvest wain That rumbles through the stubble plain.

Ye tell a tale of bearded stacks.

Of busy mills and floury sacks, Of cars oppressed with c.u.mbrous loads, Hard curving down their iron roads Of vessels speeding to the breeze.

Their snowy sails in stormy seas.

While bearing to some foreign land The products of this Golden Strand.

PALMER c.o.x, in _Comic Yarns._

JUNE 9.

MADAME MODJESKA'S DEVOTION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

During the hey-day of A.P.A.-ism in this section, Madame Modjeska returned from a triumphant tour and played for a week in Los Angeles.

* * * She selected as her princ.i.p.al piece--Mary Stuart. * * * At the final scene of the play, as Mary Stuart pa.s.ses out to her execution, Modjeska in the t.i.tle-role held us spellbound by the intense emotions of the situation. The sight of her beautiful face, upturned to heaven, showing the expression of the zeal and fervor of her Catholic heart, was intensified by the manner in which she carried the crucifix and rosary in her hand, and was the last glimpse of her as she disappeared from the stage. There was a thrill pa.s.sed over the audience, which had its effect, not only upon the unbeliever, but likewise upon the pusillanimous member of the church.

JOSEPH SCOTT, in _The Tidings._

JUNE 10.

The Mission floor was with weeds o'ergrown, And crumbling and shaky its walls of stone; Its roof of tiles, in tiers on tiers, Had stood the storms of a hundred years.

An olden, weird, medieval style Clung to the mouldering, gloomy pile, And the rhythmic voice of the breaking waves Sang a lonesome dirge in its land of graves.

Strangely awed I felt, that day, As I walked in the Mission old and gray-- The Mission Carmel at Monterey.

MADGE MORRIS WAGNER, in _Mystery of Carmel._

JUNE 11.

Up to the American invasion, the traveler in California found welcome in whatsoever house. Not food and bed and tolerance only, but warm hearts and home. Fresh clothing was laid out in his chamber. His jaded horse went to the fenceless pasture; a new and probably better steed was saddled at the door when the day came that he must go. And in the houses which had it, a casual fistful of silver lay upon his table, from which he was expected to help himself against his present needs.

It was a society in which hotels could not survive (even long after they were attempted) because every home was open to the stranger; and orphan asylums were impossible. Not because fathers and mothers never died, but because no one was civilized enough to shirk orphans.

CHARLES F. LUMMIS.

in _The Right Hand of the Continent, Out West, August_, 1892.

JUNE 12.

Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so far that life and death are not before you. Painted lizards slip in and out of rock crevices, and pant on the white-hot sands. Birds, humming-birds even, nest in the cactus scrub; woodp.e.c.k.e.rs befriend the demoniac yuccas; out of the stark, treeless waste rings the music of the night-singing mocking bird. If it be summer and the sun well down, there will be a burrowing owl to call. Strange, furry, tricksey things dart across the open places, or sit motionless in the conning towers of the creosote.

MARY AUSTIN, in _The Land of Little Rain._

JUNE 13.

EL CAMINO REAL.

_El Camino Real_--"The Royal Road," is the poetic name given to the original government road of Spanish California that joined the missions from San Diego to San Francisco de Solano. The route selected by the Franciscan Fathers was the most direct road that was practicable, connecting their four Presidios, three Pueblos and twenty-one Missions. By restoring this road and making it a State Highway with the twenty-one missions as stations, California will come to possess the most historic, picturesque, romantic and unique boulevard in the world.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES, in _Missions and Landmarks._

JUNE 14.

Because we have such faith in the charms of California; because we have such faith in the future of our city that we believe that once strangers come here they will remain in it, as of old the hero remained in the land of the ever-young; because we believe that this state can support ten, aye, twenty times its present population, we extend an invitation to all home-seekers, no matter where found. Come to California! Its valleys are wide open for all to come through and build therein their homes of peace. Its coasts teem with wealth. The riches of its mountains have not been half exploited. We believe that all that is necessary to fill this State with a great and prosperous population is that the people should see the State and know it as it is.

FATHER P.C. YORKE, in _The Warder of Two Continents._

JUNE 15.

EL CAMINO REAL.

It's a long road and sunny, and the fairest in the world-- There are peaks that rise above it in their sunny mantles curled, And it leads from the mountains through a hedge of chaparral, Down to the waters where the sea gulls call.

It's a long road and sunny, it's a long road and old.

And the brown padres made it for the flocks of the fold; They made it for the sandals of the sinner-folk that trod From the fields in the open to the shelter-house of G.o.d.

We will take the road together through the morning's golden glow, And will dream of those who trod it in the mellowed long ago.

JOHN S. MCGROARTY, in _Just California._