The California Birthday Book Part 9

Grind on, O cities, grind; I leave you a blur behind.

I am lifted elate--the skies expand; Here the world's heaped gold is a pile of sand.

Let them weary and work in their narrow walls; I ride with the voices of waterfalls!

I swing on as one in a dream; I swing Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing!

The world is gone like an empty word; My body's a bough in the wind, my heart a bird.

EDWIN MARKHAM, in _The Man with a Hoe, and Other Poems._

MARCH 6.

We move about these streets of San Francisco in cars propelled by electric energy created away yonder on the Tuolumne River in the foothills of the Sierras; we sit at home and read by a light furnished from the same distant source. How splendid it all is--the swiftly flowing cascades of the Sierra Nevadas are being harnessed like beautiful white horses, tireless and ageless, to draw the chariots of industry around this Bay.

CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN.

MARCH 7.

BACK, BACK TO NATURE.

Weary! I am weary of the madness of the town, Deathly weary of all women, and all wine.

Back, back to Nature! I will go and lay me down, Bleeding lay me down before her shrine.

For the mother-breast the hungry babe must call, Loudly to the sh.o.r.e cries the surf upon the sea; Hear, Nature wide and deep! after man's mad festival How bitterly my soul cries out for thee!

HERMAN SCHEFFAUER, in _Of Both Worlds._

MARCH 8.

Across the valley was another mountain, dark and grand, with flecks of black growing _chemisai_ in clefts and crevices, and sunny slopes and green fields lying at its base. And oh, the charm of these mountains. In the valley there might be fog and the chill of the north, but on the mountains lay the warmth and the dreaminess of the south.

JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD McCRACKIN, in _Overland Tales._

The furious wind that came driving down the canyon lying far below him was the breath of the approaching mult.i.tude of storm-demons. The giant trees on the slopes of the canyon seemed to brace themselves against the impending a.s.sault. * * *

At the bottom of the canyon, the Sacramento River here a turbulent mountain stream, and now a roaring torrent from the earlier rains of the season, fumed and foamed as it raced with the wind down the canyon hurrying on its way to the placid reaches in the plains of California.

W.C. MORROW, in _A Man: His Mark._

MARCH 9.

THE ROCK DIVING OF MOUNTAIN SHEEP.

On another occasion, a flock ... retreated to another portion of this same cliff (over 150 feet high), and, on being followed, they were seen jumping down in perfect order, one behind another, by two men who happened to be chopping where they had a fair view of them and could watch their progress from top to bottom of the precipice. Both ewes and rams made the frightful descent without evincing any extraordinary concern, hugging the rock closely, and controlling the velocity of their half-falling, half-leaping movements by striking at short intervals and holding back with their cushioned, rubber feet upon small ledges and roughened inclines until near the bottom, when they "sailed off" into the free air and alighted on their feet, but with their bodies so nearly in a vertical position that they appeared to be diving.

JOHN MUIR, in _The Mountains of California._

MARCH 10.

The ridge, ascending from seaward in a gradual coquetry of foot-hills, broad low ranges, cross-systems, canyons, little flats, and gentle ravines, inland dropped off almost sheer to the river below. And from under your very feet rose range after range, tier after tier, rank after rank, in increasing crescendo of wonderful tinted mountains to the main crest of the Coast Range, the blue distance, the mightiness of California's western systems. * * * And in the far distance, finally, your soul grown big in a moment, came to rest on the great precipices and pines of the greatest mountains of all, close under the sky.

STEWART EDWARD WHITE, in _The Mountains._

MARCH 11.

TO YOU, MY FRIEND.

To you, my friend, where'er you be, Though known or all unknown to me; To you, who love the things of G.o.d, The dew-begemmed and velvet sod, The birds that trill beside their nest.

"Oh, love, sweet love, of life is best;"

To you, for whom each sunset glows.

This message goes.

To you, my friend. Mayhap 'tis writ We ne'er shall meet. What matters it?

Where'er we roam, G.o.d's light shall gleam For us on hill and wold and stream.

And we shall hold the blossoms dear, And baby lips shall give us cheer, And, loving these, leal friends are we, Where'er you be.

To you, my friend, who know right well That life is more than money's spell, Who hear the universal call, "Let all love all, as He loves all,"

Oh, list me in your ranks benign, Accept this falt'ring hand of mine Which, though unworthy, I extend.

And hold me friend.

A.J. WATERHOUSE.

MARCH 12.

Strength is meant for something more than merely to be strong; And Life is not a lifetime spent in strain to keep alive.

CHARLES F. LUMMIS, in _The Transplantation._