Fer how about them river floods us folks hear tell of so,
Where a feller goes to bed at night with nary thought o' fear,
'Nd discovers in the mornin' that he's changed his hemisphere;
'Nd where grasshoppers eat the crops 'nd all about the place,
But leave that gilt-edged mortgage there ter stare you in the face.
If that is where you want ter live it's where you'd orter be,
But I reckon ol' Cal'forny's good 'nough fer me.
I sort o' low the climate thar is somewhat diff'runt too,
Accordin' to the weather prophet's watchful p'int o' view.
In course, if ten foot snowbanks don't bother you at all,
Er slosh 'nd mud 'nd drizzlin' rain, combined with a snowfall,
It's just the most delightful spot this side o' heaven's dome--
But I kind o' sorter reckon that I couldn't call it home.
When you talk about that climate, it's all tomfoolery,
Fer sunny ol' Cal'forny's good enough fer me.
Oh, you live away back east, you don't know what you miss
By stayin' in that measly clime, without the joy an' bliss
Of knowin' what the weather is from one day to the next;
It's "mebby this," "I hope it's that," er some such like pretext.
Come out to Californy' whar the sky is allers bright,
'Nd where the sun shines all the while, with skeerce a cloud in sight;
You'd never pine fer eastern climes--ther's no denyin' that--
Fer when you want a heaven on earth, Los Angeles stands pat.
E.A. BRININSTOOL.
CALIFORNIA.
In all methinks I see the counterpart
Of Italy, without her dower of art.
We have the lordly Alps, the fir-fringed hills,
The green and golden valleys veined with rills,
A dead Vesuvius with its smouldering fire,
A tawny Tiber sweeping to the sea.
Our seasons have the same superb attire,
The same redundant wealth of flower and tree,
Upon our peaks the same imperial dyes,
And day by day, serenely over all,
The same successive months of smiling skies.
Conceive a cross, a tower, a convent wall,
A broken column and a fallen fane,
A chain of crumbling arches down the plain,
A group of brown-faced children by a stream,
A scarlet-skirted maiden standing near,
A monk, a beggar, and a muleteer,
And lo! it is no longer now a dream.
These are the Alps, and there the Apennines;
The fertile plains of Lombardy between;
Beyond Val d'Arno with its flocks and vines,
These granite crags are gray monastic shrines
Perched on the cliffs like old dismantled forts;
And far to seaward can be dimly seen
The marble splendor of Venetian courts;
While one can all but hear the mournful rhythmic beat
Of white-lipped waves along the sea-paved street.
O childless mother of dead empires, we,
The latest born of all the western lands,
In fancied kinship stretch our infant hands
Across the intervening seas to thee.
Thine the immortal twilight, ours the dawn,
Yet we shall have our names to canonize,
Our past to haunt us with its solemn eyes,
Our ruins, when this restless age is gone.
LUCIUS HARWOOD FOOTE.
SEPTEMBER 1.
THE SCARF OF IRIS.
Something magical is near me--hidden, breathing everywhere,
Shaken out in mystic odors, caught unseen in the mid-air.
Life is waking, palpitating; souls of flowers are drawing nigh;
Flitting birds with fluted warble weave between the earth and sky;
And a soft excitement welling from the inmost heart of things
Such a sense of exaltation, such a call to rapture brings,
That my heart--all tremulous with a virgin wonderment--
Waits and yearns and sings in carols of the rain and sunshine blent,
Knowing more will be revealed with the dawning every day--
For the fairy scarf of Iris falls across the common way.
RUBY ARCHER.
SEPTEMBER 2.
To the left as you rode you saw, far on the horizon, rising to the
height of your eye, the mountains of the Channel Islands. Then the
deep sapphire of the Pacific, fringed with the soft, unchanging white
of the surf and the yellow of the shore. Then the town like a little
map, and the lush greens of the wide meadows, the fruit-groves, the
lesser ranges--all vivid, fertile, brilliant, and pulsating with
vitality.
STEWART EDWARD WHITE,
in _The Mountains._
SEPTEMBER 3.
Never was garden more unintentionally started, and never did one prove
greater source of pleasure. * * * One day, about Christmas time, my
little nephew brought me two small twigs of honeysuckle--not slips or
shoots, and I stuck them in the ground by the front porch. * * * When
it was just eighteen months old honeysuckle vines were twining tenderly
about the corner pillars of the porch, drawing their network across to
the other support, and covered with bunches of white, creamy tubes, the
air heavy with their perfume. * * * The climbing rose had reached the
lattice work, and its yellowish flowers formed a most effective
contrast to the sky-blue of the sollya blossoms, trained up on the
other side of the porch. The beds were edged variously with dark blue
violets and pink daisies, above which bloomed salvias, euphorbias,
lantanas, tube-roses, forget-me-nots, carnations, white lilies, Japan
lilies, iris, primroses, ranunculus, lilies-of-the-valley, pansies,
anemones, dahlias, and roses--white, red, pink, yellow, crimson,
cream--in the wildest profusion.
JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD McCRACKIN,
in _Another Juanita._
SEPTEMBER 4.
AFTERWARD.
A dying moon fell down the sky,
As one looked out to see
The place where once her soul endured
Its lengthened Calvary.
Of all the mem'ries gathered there--
Their faces wan with tears--
One only smiled--a baby's smile--
To rectify the years.
DOROTHEA L. MOORE.
SEPTEMBER 5.
The harvesting of hops is the conjunction of the rude essentials of
farm life with the highest effect in art. What artist but would note
enthusiastically the inimitable pose of that young girl tip-toeing to
bring down the tuft of creamy blossoms overhead; or the modest nudity
of the wee bronze savage capering about a stolid squaw in a red
sprigged muslin? Indeed, there is indescribable piquancy in this
unconscious grouping of the pickers and their freedom from restraint.
For each artistic bit--a laughing face in an aureole of amber clusters,
a statuesque chin and throat, Indians in grotesquely picturesque
raiment, and the yellow visages of the Chinese--the vines make an
idyllic framing with a sinking summer sun in the background lending a
shimmering transparency to leaf and flower.
NINETTA EAMES,
in _Hop-Picking Time, The Cosmopolitan, November_, 1893.
SEPTEMBER 6.
Golf has spread with great rapidity throughout California, and though
many people may have taken it up from an idea that it is the correct
thing, the game will always be popular, especially in the Southern part
of the State, where more people of leisure live than in the Northern
part, and where the large infusion of British and Eastern residents
tends to foster a love of out-door sports. Golf may be played in any
part of Central or Southern California on any day in the year when a
gale is not blowing or heavy rain falling. Occasionally the strong
winds render golfing somewhat arduous, but the enthusiast can play on
about three hundred and fifty days in the year.
ARTHUR INKERSLEY,
in _Overland Monthly._
SEPTEMBER 7.
My roses bud and bloom and fail me never,
From Lent and Whitsun to the Christmas time;
Climbing in eagerness and great endeavor--
Our Southland bushes ever love to climb.
JAMES MAIN DIXON,
in _My Garden._
How bright the world looked, to be sure; flowers covered the earth, not
scattered in niggardly manner as in the older, colder Eastern states,
but covering the earth for miles, showing nothing but a sea of blue, an
ocean of crimson, or a wilderness of yellow. Then came patches where
all shades and colors were mixed; delicate tints of pink and mauve, of
pure white and deep red, and over all floated a fragrance that was
never equaled by garden-flowers or their distilled perfume.
JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD McCRACKIN,
in _Overland Tales._
SEPTEMBER 8.
The love that gives all, craves all, asks nothing, is so bitter that no
one lifts the cup voluntarily, and yet if the sweetness of it could be
distilled, prosperous love would regard it enviously and kings seek it
on foot.
AMANDA MATHEWS,
in _Hieroglyphics of Love._
The world will never be saved from its sin and shame until a larger
number of men are ready to lash themselves like Ulysses of old to those
enduring principles of righteousness which stand erect like masts and
sail on, no matter what sirens of personal indulgence sing along the
course.
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN.
SEPTEMBER 9.
TO CALIFORNIA:
Queen of the Sunset!
Within the crown upon thy forehead glow
The crystal jewels of eternal snow.
Down at thy feet the broad Pacific towers,
And Summer ever binds thy breast with flowers.
MADGE MORRIS WAGNER,
in _Debris._
The religious life of California is characterized by the spirit of
freedom and tolerance. The aim has been to "Render unto Caesar the
things which are Caesar's," by legislating only in regard to those
secular interests in which all stand alike before the law and to leave
to the free and untrammeled decision of the individual conscience those
deeper, personal attitudes and relationships "which are God's."
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN.
SEPTEMBER 10.
Gay little oriole, fond little lover,
Watching thy mate o'er her tiny ones hover,
Tell me, I pray, from your cottonwood tree,
When will my true love come riding to me?
Will he come with his lariat hung at his side?
On a wild prancing bronco, my love, will he ride?
So high on your tree top you surely can see,
O, how will my true love come riding to me?
Sing of my lover and tell me my fate,
Will he guard me as fondly as thou dost thy mate?
Dear oriole, sing, while I listen to thee--
When will my true love come riding to me?
CHARLES KEELER,
in _Overland Monthly._
SEPTEMBER 11.
LOOKING BACKWARD!
My heart aches, and a poignant yearning pains
My pulse, as though from revel I had waked
To find sore disenchantment.
Oh for the simple ways of childhood,
And its joys!
Why have I grown so cold and cynical?
My life seems out of tune;
Its notes harsh and discordant;
The crowded thoroughfare doth fret me
And make lonely.
Darkling I muse and yearn
For those glad days of yore,
When my part chorded too,
And I, a merry, trustful boy,
Found consonance in every friend without annoy.
Since then, how changed!
Strained are the strings of friendship; fled the joys;
Seeming the show.
An alien I, unlike, alone!
And yet my mother! The welcome word o'erflows the eye,
And makes the very memory weep.
No, love is not extinct--that sweetest name--
The covering ashes keep alive the flame.
MALCOLM McLEOD,
in _Culture Simplicity._
SEPTEMBER 12.
The overgoing sun shines upon no region, of equal extent, which offers
so many and such varied inducements to men in search of homes and
health, as does the region which is entitled to the appellation of
"Semi-Tropical California."
BEN C. TRUMAN,
in _Semi-Tropical California._
SEPTEMBER 13.
THE CRESTED JAY.
The jay is a jovial bird--heigh-ho!
He chatters all day
In a frolicsome way
With the murmuring breezes that blow--heigh-ho!
Hear him noisily call
From a redwood tree tall
To his mate in the opposite tree--heigh-ho!
Saying: "How do you do?"
As his top-knot of blue
Is raised as polite as can be--heigh-ho!
O impudent jay,
With your plumage so gay,
And your manners so jaunty and free--heigh-ho!
How little you guessed
When you robbed the wren's nest,
That any stray fellow would see--heigh-ho!
CHARLES KEELER,
in _Elfin Songs of Sunland._
SEPTEMBER 14.
It is to prevent the wholesale slaughter of songbirds that I appeal to
you. The farmer or the fruit-raiser has not yet learned enough to
distinguish friend from foe, and goes gunning in season and out of
season, so that the cherry orchard, when the cherries are ripe, looks
like a battle-field in miniature, the life-blood of the little slain
birds rivaling in color the brightness of their wings and breast. And
all this destruction of song, of gladness, of helpfulness, because the
poor birds have pecked at a few early cherries, worthless, almost, in
the market, as compared to the later, better kinds, which they do not
interfere with.
JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD McCRACKIN.
SEPTEMBER 15.
THE VOICE OF THE CALIFORNIA DOVE.
Come, listen O love, to the voice of the dove,
Come, hearken and hear him say,
"There are many Tomorrows, my love, my love,
There is only one Today."
And all day long you can hear him say,
This day in purple is rolled,
And the baby stars of the milky way
They are cradled in cradles of gold.
Now what is thy secret, serene gray dove,
Of singing so sweetly alway?
"There are many Tomorrows, my love, my love,
There is only one Today."
JOAQUIN MILLER.
SEPTEMBER 16.
With the tip of his strong cane he breaks off a piece of the serried
bark, and a spider scurries down the side of the log and into the
grass. He chips off another piece, and a bevy of sow-bugs make haste to
tumble over and play dead, curling their legs under their sides, but
recovering their senses and scurrying off after the spider. The cane
continues to chip off the bark, and down tumble all sorts of
wood-people, some of them hiding like a flash in the first moist earth
they come to; others never stopping until they are well under the log,
where experience has taught them they will be safe out of harm's way.
And they declare to themselves, and to each other, that they will never
budge from under that log until it is midnight, and that wicked
meadow-lark is fast asleep.
ELIZABETH AND JOSEPH GRINNELL,
in _Birds of Song and Story._
SEPTEMBER 17.
SIESTA.
A shady nook where nought is overheard
But wind among the eucalyptus leaves,
The cheery chirp of interflitting bird,
Or wooden squeak of tree-frog as it grieves.
The resting eye broods o'er the running grass,
Or nodding gestures of the bowed wild oats;
Watches the oleander lancers pass,
And the bright flashing of the oriole notes.
Hushed are the senses with the drone of bees
And the far glimmer of the mid-day heat;
Dreams stealing o'er one like the incoming seas,
Soft as the rustling zephyrs in the wheat;
While on the breeze is borne the call of Love
To Love, dear Love, of Majel, the wild dove.
CHARLES ELMER JENNEY,
in _Western Field, Dec._, 1905.
SEPTEMBER 18.
One summer there came a road-runner up from the lower valley, peeking
and prying, and he never had any patience with the water baths of the
sparrows. His own ablutions were performed in the clean, hopeful dust
of the chaparral; and whenever he happened on their morning
splatterings, he would depress his glossy crest, slant his shining tail
to the level of his body, until he looked most like some bright
venomous snake, daunting them with shrill abuse and feint of battle.
Then suddenly he would go tilting and balancing down the gully in fine
disdain, only to return in a day or two to make sure the foolish bodies
were still at it.
MARY AUSTIN,
in _The Land of Little Rain._
SEPTEMBER 19.
MEADOW LARKS.
Sweet, sweet, sweet! O happy that I am!
(Listen to the meadow-larks, across the fields that sing!)
Sweet, sweet, sweet! O subtle breath of balm.
O winds that blow, O buds that grow, O rapture of the Spring!
Sweet, sweet, sweet! Who prates of care and pain?
Who says that life is sorrowful? O life so glad, so fleet!
Ah! he who lives the noblest life finds life the noblest gain.
The tears of pain a tender rain to make its waters sweet.
Sweet, sweet, sweet! O happy world that is!
Dear heart, I hear across the fields my mateling pipe and call.
Sweet, sweet, sweet! O world so full of bliss--
For life is love, the world is love, and love is over all!
INA D. COOLBRITH,
in _Songs from the Golden Gate._
SEPTEMBER 20.
How could we spare the lark, that most companionable bird of the
plains? Wherever one may wander ... his lovely, plaintive, almost human
song may be heard nearly everywhere, at frequent intervals the livelong
day. He is one of the blessings of this land, one which every lover of
beautiful song welcomes as heartily as the ordinary mortal the warm,
bright days of this climate.
CHARLES FRANKLIN CARTER,
in _Some By-Ways of California._
SEPTEMBER 21.
THE MEADOW LARK AND I.
The song of life is living
The love-heart of the year;
And the pagan meadow-lark and I
Can nothing find to fear.
We build our simple homes
For opulence of rest
Among the hills and the meadow grass,
And sing our grateful best.
RUBY ARCHER.
SEPTEMBER 22.
THE RUBY-CROWNED KNIGHT.
The dominant characteristic of the Ruby-Crown is subtlety. He conceals
his nest, and even his nest-building region, so successfully that few
there are who know where he breeds, or who ever find his nest, hidden
in the shaggy end of a high, swinging branch of spruce or pine, deep in
the California mountain recesses. His prettiest trick of concealement
is the way he alternately hides and reveals the bright red feathers in
his crown. You may watch him a long time, seeing only a wee bit of an
olive-green bird, toned with dull yellow underneath, marked on wings
and about the eyes with white; but suddenly, a more festive mood comes
upon him. The bird is transformed. A jaunty dash of brilliant red
upcrests itself upon his head, lighting up his quiet dress.... For
several moments this flame of color quivers, then it burns into a mere
thread of red and is gone.
VIRGINIA GARLAND,
in _Feathered Californians._
SEPTEMBER 23.
SONG OF THE LINNETS.
"Cheer!" "Cheer!" sing the linnets
Through rapturous minutes,
When daylight first breaks
And the golden Dawn streaks
Through the rose of the morning--so bright!
"Gone! gone is the Night! It is light!"
"We have buried our heads
Under eaves of the sheds,
Where our tender broods sleep;
And the long watch we keep
Through the darkness and silence--till dawn.
It is morn! It is morn! It is morn!"
JOHN WARD STIMSON,
in _Wandering Chords._
SEPTEMBER 24.
THE HUMMING BIRD.
Buz-z! whir-r!--a flash and away!
A midget bejeweled mid flowers at play!
A snip of a birdling, the blossom-bells' king,
A waif of the sun-beams on quivering wing!
O prince of the fairies, O pygmy of fire,
Will nothing those brave little wings of yours tire?
You follow the flowers from southern lands sunny,
You pry amid petals all summer for honey!
Now rest on a twig, tiny flowerland sprite,
Your dear little lady sits near in delight;
In a wee felted basket she lovingly huddles--
Two dots of white eggs to her warm breast she cuddles!
Whiz-z! whiff! off to your flowers!
Buzz mid the perfume of jasmine bowers!
Chatter and chirrup, my king of the fays,
And laugh at the song that I sing in your praise!
CHARLES KEELER,
in _Elfin Songs of Sunland._
SEPTEMBER 25.
THE HUMMING BIRD.
A sudden whirr of eager sound--
And now a something throbs around
The flowers that watch the fountain. Look!
It touched the rose, the green leaves shook,
I think, and yet so lightly tost
That not a spark of dew was lost.
Tell me, O rose, what thing it is
That now appears, now vanishes?
Surely it took its fire-green hue
From day-breaks that it glittered through;
Quick, for this sparkle of the dawn
Glints through the garden and is gone.
EDWIN MARKHAM,
in _Lincoln and Other Poems._
SEPTEMBER 26.
She led the way to the climbing rose at the front of the house, and
carefully lifting a branch, motioned to the boys to look under it.
There, hidden in the leafy covert, no higher than the young girl's
chin, was the daintiest nest ever seen, made of soft cotton from the
pussy willows by the brook, interwoven with the finest grasses and
green mosses, and embroidered with one shining golden thread. And there
was wee mother humming-bird, watching them a moment with bright,
inquiring eyes, then darting off and poising in the air just above
their heads, uncovering two tiny eggs about the size of buckshot, lying
in a downy hollow like a thimble.
FLORA HAINES LOUGHEAD,
in _The Abandoned Claim._
SEPTEMBER 27.
THE RUSSET-BACKED THRUSH.
He dwells where pine and hemlock grow,
A merry minstrel seldom seen;
The voice of Joy is his I know--
Shy poet of the Evergreen!
In dawn's first holy hush I hear
His one ecstatic, thrilling strain,
So sweet and strong, so crystal clear
'Twould tingle e'en the soul of Pain.
At close of day when Twilight dreams
He shakes the air beneath his tree
With such exquisite song it seems
That Passion breathes through Melody.
HERBERT BASHFORD,
in _At the Shrine of Song._
SEPTEMBER 28.
In Marin County birds hold a unique place, for, as the county is
sparsely populated, possessing many wild, secluded valleys, and
unnumbered rolling hills covered with virgin forests, it is but natural
that the birds should congregate in great numbers, reveling in the
solitude which man invariably destroys.
HELEN BINGHAM,
in _In Tamal Land._
THE ABALONE.
I saw a rainbow, for an instant, gleam,
On the west edge of a receeding swell;
The next soft surge,
Which whispering sought the shore,
Swept to my feet an abalone shell;
It was the rainbow I had seen before.
JOHN E. RICHARDS,
in _Idylls of Monterey._
SEPTEMBER 29.
THE SEAGULL.
A ceaseless rover, waif of many climes,
He scorns the tempest, greets the lifting sun
With wings that fling the light and sinks at times
To ride in triumph where the tall waves run.
The rocks tide-worn, the high cliff brown and bare
And crags of bleak, strange shores he rests upon;
He floats above, a moment hangs in air
Clean-etched against the broad, gold breast of dawn.
Bold hunter of the deep! Of thy swift flights
What of them all brings keenest joy to thee--
To drive sharp pinions through storm-beaten nights,
Or shriek amid black hollows of the sea?
HERBERT BASHFORD,
in _At the Shrine of Song._
SEPTEMBER 30.
TO A SEA GULL AT SEA.
Thou winged Wonder!
Tell me I pray thy matchless craft,
Poised in air, then slipping wave-ward,
Mounting again like an arrow-shaft,
Circling, swaying, wheeling, dipping,
All with never a flap of wing,
Keeping pace with my flying ship here,
Give me a key to my wondering!
Gales but serve thee for swifter flying,
Foam crested waves with thy wings thou dost sweep,
Wonderful dun-colored, down-covered body,
Living thy life on the face of the deep!
ANNIE W. BRIGMAN.
OCTOBER 1.
THE PASSING OF SUMMER.
She smiled to the hearts that enshrined her,
Then the gold of her banner unfurled
And trailing her glories behind her
Passed over the rim of the world.
HARLEY R. WILEY,
in _New England Magazine, October_, 1906.
The California condor, the largest of all flying birds, is found only
on this coast and only in the southern half of that, although an
occasional specimen has been seen in the high Sierra Neveda. Of all the
sailing or soaring birds he is the most graceful and wonderful,
drifting to and fro, up and down, right or left, in straight lines or
curves, for hours at a time, darting like an arrow or hanging still in
air with equal ease on that motionless wing whose power puzzles all
philosophy.
T.S. VANDYKE.
OCTOBER 2.
Wild fowl, quacking hordes of them, nest in the tulares. Any day's
venture will raise from open shallows the great blue heron on his
hollow wings. Chill evenings the mallard drakes cry continually from
the glassy pools, the bittern's hollow boom rolls along the water
paths. Strange and far-flown fowl drop down against the saffron, autumn
sky. All day wings beat above it with lazy speed; long flights of
cranes glimmer in the twilight. By night one wakes to hear the clanging
geese go over. One wishes for, but gets no nearer speech from those the
ready fens have swallowed up. What they do there, how fare, what find,
is the secret of the tulares.
MARY AUSTIN,
in _The Land of Little Rain._
OCTOBER 3.
MOCKING BIRD.
Warble, whistle and ripple! wake! whip up! ha! ha!
Burgle, bubble and frolic--a roundelay far!
Pearls on pearls break and roll like bright drops from a bowl!
And they thrill, as they spill in a rill, o'er my soul:
Then thou laughest so light
From thy rapturous height!
Earth and Heaven are combined, in thy full dulcet tone;
North and south pour the nectar thy throat blends in one!
Flute and flageolet, bugle, light zither, guitar!
Diamond, topaz and ruby! Sun, moon, silver star!
Ripe cherries in wine!
Orange blossoms divine!
Genius of Songsters! so matchless in witchery!
Nature hath fashioned thee out of her mystery!
JOHN WARD STIMSON,
in _Wandering Chords._
OCTOBER 4.
THE MOCKING BIRD.