newspapers. She writes no books, delivers no lectures, paints no great
pictures, but remains the inconspicuous, silent worker, blessing her
home, reinforcing her husband, bringing up her children, and doing the
most important work God has intrusted to the hands of a woman. She is
still a great force in the nation; for the hand that rocks the cradle
still rules the world. Whenever you find a great man, you will find a
great woman. All successful men, it will be found, depend upon some
woman. So Garfield thought when he kissed his mother after kissing the
Bible, when made President of the United States.
REV. WILLIAM RADER,
in _Lecture on Uncle Sam; or The Reign of the Common People._
NOVEMBER 9.
Found that "gracious hollow that God made" in his mother's shoulder
that fit his head as pillows of down never could. Cried when they took
him away from it, when he was a tiny baby, "with no language but a
cry." Cried once again, twenty-five or thirty years afterward, when
God took it away from him. All the languages he had learned, and all
the eloquent phrasing the colleges had taught him, could not then
voice the sorrow of his heart so well as the tears he tried to check.
ROBERT J. BURDETTE,
in _The Story of Rollo._
NOVEMBER 10.
Lovely color and graceful outline and clever texture are good things,
but we need more, much more, for the making of a real picture. When
the soul is brimming with an overflowing bounty of beauty, all means
are inadequate to express the fullness of its splendor. Man has not
yet come to his full heritage, but every new mode of expression is an
added language which brings him a little nearer to it.
W.L. JUDSON,
in _The Building of a Picture._
The future of this country depends naturally upon the caliber of the
succeeding generations, and if the Catholic Church is to succeed in
California or elsewhere along material as well as spiritual lines, it
must keep the fear of God in our men and the love of children in our
women, and if these two fundamental virtues are thoroughly sustained,
we need have no anxiety as to the future.
JOSEPH SCOTT,
in _Speech at the Seattle Exposition._
NOVEMBER 11.
BEAUTY.
A hint is flung from the scene most fair
That real beauty is not there;
That earth and blossom, sea and sky,
Would be empty without the seeing eye,
That form and color, movement and rhythm
Are not true elements of heaven
Till passed through transforming power of thought;
For eye seeth only what soul hath wrought.
Ah! Beauty, thou the flowering art
Of the upright mind and guileless heart.
MARY RUSSELL MILLS.
NOVEMBER 12.
THE BRAKEMAN AT CHURCH.
After asking the Brakeman if he had been to each of the leading
churches, the querist finally suggested the Baptists. "Ah, ha!" he
shouted. "Now you're on the Shore Line! River Road, eh? Beautiful
curves, lines of grace at every bend and sweep of the river; all steel
rail and rock ballast; single track, and not a siding from the
round-house to the terminus. Takes a heap of water to run it through;
double tanks at every station, and there isn't an engine in the shops
that can run a mile or pull a pound with less than two gauges. * * *
And yesterday morning, when the conductor came around taking up fares
with a little basket punch, I didn't ask him to pass me; I paid my
fare like a little Jonah--twenty-five cents for a ninety-minute run,
with a concert by the passengers thrown in."
ROBERT J. BURDETTE,
_Pastor Emeritus Temple Baptist Church, Los Angeles._
NOVEMBER 13.
Directly opposite sat a Chinese dignitary richly apparrelled, serene,
bland, bearing with courteous equanimity flirtatious overtures of an
unattached blonde woman at his left, and the pert coquetry of a young
girl at the other side. The mother of the girl ventured meek, unheeded
remonstrances between mouthfuls of crab salad. * * *
"But you have not answered my question," he reminded her. "Do you
believe in affinities?"
"I think that I do," hesitatingly.
"You are not certain?"
"N-o; if to have an affinity means to have a very dear friend, whom
one trusts, and whom one desires to make happy--"
"You speak as if you had such a friend in mind," he hazarded.
"I have," she replied simply.
"Happy man!" he sighed.
"I referred to my St. Bernard dog."
"Oh!" Protracted silence. "No use," he drawled. "My pride will not let
me enter the lists with a St. Bernard."
"That is not pride, but modesty," she asserted, and laughed. Her
laughter reminded Horton of liquid sunshine, melted pearls, and
sparkling cascades.
IDA MANSFIELD WILSON,
in _According to Confucius._
NOVEMBER 14.
There's only one thing to do, there can be but one--to say the thing
your soul says, to live the life your heart wills, to die the death
your imagination approves and your spirit sanctions!
MIRIAM MICHELSON,
in _Anthony Overman._
NOVEMBER 15.
TWO LITTLE CHINESE SISTERS.
Their blouses were of pink silk, and their trousers of pale lavender.
They wore gay head-dresses, and were indeed beautiful to look upon.
Sai Gee, a little-footed playmate of theirs, lived a few doors from
them, and they had no difficulty in finding her home. Sai Gee was also
dressed up in her gayest attire. * * * Sai Gee could play the flute.
It was really wonderful. She sat upon a stool, over which an
embroidered robe had been thrown, and played to them. Her hair was
done in a coil back of her right ear, and her little brown face was
sweet and wistful as she brought forth from the flute the most
wonderful sounds.
JESSIE JULIET KNOX,
in _Little Almond Blossoms._
NOVEMBER 16.
She was only a little yellow woman from Asia, with queer, wide
trousers for skirts and rocker-soled shoes that flopped against her
heels. Her uncovered black hair was firmly knotted and securely pinned
and her eyes were black of color and soft of look. * * * She saw the
morning sun push its way through a sea of amber and the nickel dome of
the great observatory on Mount Hamilton standing ebony against the
radiant East. She heard the Oriental jargon of the early hucksters who
cried their wares in the ill-smelling alleys, and with tears she added
to the number of pearls which the dew had strewn upon the porch.
W.C. MORROW,
in _The Ape, the Idiot and Other People._
NOVEMBER 17.
Sing is not included in the category of "goody-goody" boys. He is full
of fun, and play, and willful pranks, and he sees the ridiculous side
of everything quickly, but he seems naturally to accept only the good
and to shun evil in any form. He is pure and innocent by nature and
seems attracted to every person of similar characteristics. He has
discernment and watches the faces of people closely, seeming to care
more for their motives than for their deeds.
NELLIE BLESSING EYSTER,
in _A Chinese Quaker._
NOVEMBER 18.
INDIAN ARROW HEADS FOUND IN CALIFORNIA.
Obsidian is a beautiful, translucent volcanic rock, usually black,
with cloudy flecks, as are seen in jade; like jade it is so hard as to
be capable of taking an edge like a razor. Flaked on its flat surface
and often beautifully serrated on the edge, an arrowhead or a
spearhead is in itself a thing of beauty and a work of art, whether
the Indian manufacturer knew it or not.
L. CLARE DAVIS
in "Long Ago in San Joaquin," in _Sunset Magazine._
In a year, in a year, when the grapes are ripe,
I shall stay no more away--
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day.
In a year, in a year, when my time is past--
Then I'll live in your love for aye.
Then if you still are true, my love,
It will be our wedding day.
JACK LONDON.
NOVEMBER 19.
Had California owed her settlement and civic life wholly to the
vanguard of that pioneer host, which ... pressed steadily westward to
Kansas and the Rockies, the Golden State would not have today that
literary flavor that renders her in a measure a unique figure among
the western states of the country.
JAMES MAIN DIXON,
in _California and Californians in Literature._
NOVEMBER 20.
All things are but material reflections of mental images. This is
realized in picture and statue in temple and machine. The picture is
but a faint representation of the picture in the soul of painter. He
did his best to catch it with brush and canvas. Had it not existed for
him before the brush was in his hand, it would never have been
painted. * * * Concentration is the only mental attitude under which
mental images (ideals) shape themselves into the material life. As
long as you hold an ideal before you that long is it shaping itself
into your body, your business and into your social life. When you
change your ideal then the new begins to shape itself. Have you, like
the sculptor, held to one till it carves itself "into the marble
real?" Or have you taken the life-block and placed it into the hands
of an Ideal today, another tomorrow, and another next day, till you
have as many ideals as you have days? * * * Is not your life a
composite of all these, not one complete? Concentration means holding
to one ideal until your objective life becomes that mental picture.
Thus it is true: I am that which I think myself to be.
HENRY HARRISON BROWN,
in _Concentration: The Road to Success._
NOVEMBER 21.
The process which we call evolution is the return of the atom to God,
or the extension of consciousness in the growing creation, and this
process which unifies all that exists or can exist in our world is the
working out of the One Purpose and Plan by the One Power. This is what
we mean by the Spiritual Constitution of the Universe, and in the
light of this thought every person, animal, plant and mineral, every
atom and all force, all events and circumstances and conditions and
objects are more or less intelligent and conscious expressions of the
One Purpose and the One Life. Man is thus led to count nothing human
foreign to him, and his inner eyes open to perceive Truth, Goodness
and Beauty everywhere.
BENJAMIN FAY MILLS,
in _The New Revelation._
NOVEMBER 22.
Laughter is the music of the soul. It is the sun falling on the rain
drops. Laughter is the nightingale's voice in the night. It chases
away care, destroys worry. It is the intoxicating cup of good nature,
which cheers, but does not cheat. Laughter paints pictures, dreams
dreams, and floods life with love. Blessed are the people who can
laugh! Laughter is religion and hope; and the apostles of good nature,
who see the bright side of life, the queer and funny things among men,
the clowns in Vanity Fair, as well as the deep and terrible pathos of
life, are missionaries of comfort and evangels of good health.
REV. WILLIAM RADER,
in _Lecture on Uncle Sam; or The Reign of the Common People._
NOVEMBER 23.
Given so unique a climate as ours of Southern California, one would
expect it to be hailed gladly as a helper in the solution of this
problem of how and where to build and how to adorn one's home. For it
really meets the most trying items of the problem, making it a pure
pleasure.
Instead, then, of the styles which suit the winter-climate of other
states, and which, transplanted here, have grown too often into
mongrel specimens of foreign style and other times--we should adapt
our Southern California homes, first of all, to the climatic
conditions which prevail here.
MADAME CAROLINE SEVERANCE,
in _The Mother of Clubs._
NOVEMBER 24.
Houses furnished in all the styles of modern decorative art rise in
all directions, embowered in roses, geraniums, heliotropes, and lilies
that bloom the long year round and reach a size that makes them hard
to recognize as old friends. Among them rise the banana, the palm, the
aloe, the rubber tree, and the pampas-grass with its tall feathery
plumes. Here and there one sees the guava, the Japanese persimmon,
Japanese plum, or some similar exotic--but grapes and oranges are the
principal product. Yet there are groves of English walnuts almost
rivaling in size the great orange orchards, and orchards of prunes,
nectarines, apricots, plums, pears, peaches, and apples that are
little behind in size or productiveness.
T.S. VAN DYKE,
in _Southern California._
NOVEMBER 25.
He saw a great hall furnished in the most extravagantly complete style
of Indian art. The walls were entirely covered with Navaho and Hopi
blankets. There was a frieze of Apache hide-shields, each painted with
a brave's totem, and beneath, a solid cornice of buffalo skulls.
Puma-skins carpeted the floor; at least a hundred baskets trimmed with
wood-pecker and quail feathers were scattered about; trophies of
Indian bows, arrows, lances, war-clubs, tomahawks, pipes and knives
decorated the wall spaces. Two couches were made up of Zuni bead-work
ornaments and buck-skin embroideries. In spite of all this, it was a
tastefully designed room, rather than a museum, flaming with color and
vibrant with vitality.
GELETT BURGESS,
in _A Little Sister of Destiny._
NOVEMBER 26.
She sent a hundred messages out into the hills by thought's wonderful
telegraphy. She saw the yellow-green of the new shoots; the gray-green
of the gnarled live oak; she felt that the mariposa was waking in the
brown hillside. She almost heard the creamy bells of the tall yucca
pealing out a hymn to the God who expresses himself in continual
creation. Then, O, wonder of wonders! Over the same invisible wires
came back the response: It all means love, the earth's rendings, the
rains, winds, scorchings--it all means love in the grand consummation,
nothing but love. She thrilled to the wonder of it.
ELIZABETH BAKER BOHAN,
in _The Strength of the Weak._
NOVEMBER 27.
THE IDEAL CALIFORNIA EDITOR.
The ideal editor must be a colossal, composite figure, one to whom no
man of whatever age, race or color, is a stranger; one whose mobility
of character and elasticity of temperament expands or contracts as
occasion demands, without deflecting in the least from the law of
perfect harmony. He must know how to smile encouragement, frown
disapproval, or, at an instant's notice bow deferentially and attend
with utmost courtesy to wearisome stories of stupid patrons, or listen
to the fantastic schemes of radical reformers and, with apparent
seriousness and ostensible amiability, nod acquiescence to the
wild-eyed revolutionist upon whom he inwardly vows to keep a careful
watch lest the fire-brand agitator commit serious public mischief. The
ideal editor of the popular press must be the quintescence of tact; an
adroit strategist, a sagacious chief executive, keenly critical, ably
judicial, broad, generous, sympathetic, hospitable, aye, charitable,
magnanimous, ready to forgive and forget, patient and long-suffering
when subjected to the competitive lash of adverse criticism, bearing
calumny rather with quiet dignity than stooping to low and vulgar
forms of retaliation.
BERTHA HIRSCH BARUCH,
in _Sunday Times Magazine._
NOVEMBER 28.
CALIFORNIA TO IRELAND.
Great! Erect! Majestic! Free!
Thrilled with life from sea to sea.
See the Motherland uphold
To the sky her Green and Gold.
LAURENCE BRANNICK.
NOVEMBER 29.
And the books! Without final data at hand, I incline to believe that
by the time the war came along to give us a new text, California had
already, in a dozen years, doubled the volume of American literature.
In the same way, of course, that it was doubled again--for our war
literature was not mostly written upon the battle-field. In half a
century this current has not ceased. It is a lean month even now which
does not see, somewhere, some sort of book about California. It is
certain that as much literature (using the word as it is used) has
been written of California as of all the other states together. This
means, of course, only matter in which the State is an essential, not
an incident.
CHARLES F. LUMMIS,
in _The Right Hand of the Continent, Out West,
June_, 1902.
NOVEMBER 30.
By a queer sequence of circumstances, the essays, begun in the _Lark_,
were continued in the _Queen_, and, if you have read these two papers,
you will know that one magazine is as remote in character from the
other as San Francisco is from London. But each has happened to fare
far afield in search of readers, and between them I may have converted
a few to my optimistic view of every-day incident. To educate the
British Matron and Young Person was, perhaps, no more difficult than
to open the eyes of the California Native Son. The fogs that fall over
the Thames are not very different to the mists that drive in through
the Golden Gate, after all!
GELETT BURGESS,
in _The Romance of the Commonplace._
DECEMBER 1.
The Bohemian Club, whose real founder is said to have been the late
Henry George, was formed in the '70's by newspaper writers and men
working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a
membership of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers,
musicians and actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group
of men, and hospitality was their evocation. Yet the thing which set
this club off from all others in the world was the midsummer High
Jinks. The club owned a fine tract of redwood forest fifty miles north
of San Francisco. In August the whole Bohemian Club, or such as could
get away from business, went up to this grove and camped out for two
weeks. On the last night they put on the Jinks proper, a great
spectacle in praise of the forest with poetic words, music and effects
done by the club. In late years this has been practically a masque or
an opera. It cost about $10,000. * * * The thing which made it
possible was the art spirit which is in the Californian.
WILL IRWIN,
in _The City That Was._
DECEMBER 2.
Nearly all is now covered with a luxuriant growth of vegetation the
most diverse, yet all of it foreign to the soil. Side by side are the
products of two zones, reaching the highest stages of perfection, yet
none of them natives of this coast.
Gay cottages now line the roads where so recently the hare cantered
along the dusty cattle-trail; and villages lie brightly green with a
wealth of foliage where the roaring wings of myriads of quail shook
the air above impenetrable jungles of cactus.
T.S. VAN DYKE,
in _Southern California._
DECEMBER 3.
* * * The chief and highest function of the University is to assert
and perpetually prove that general principles--laws--govern Man,
Society, Nature, Life; and to make unceasing war on the reign of
temporary expedients. * * * There never was a period or a country in
which the reign of fundamental law needed constant assertion and more
perpetual proof than our own period and our own country. * * * The
living danger is that society may come to permanently distrust the
reign of law. * * * A national or a personal life built on expedients
of the day, like a house built on the sand, will inevitably come to
ruin.
PRESIDENT HOLDEN,
in _Inaugural Address of University of California_, 1886.
DECEMBER 4.
And now my story is told, the story of my work, and the story of my
life. Looking back over all the long stretch of years that I have
carried this heavy burden, though I should not care to assume it
again, yet I am not sorry to have borne it. Of the various motives
which urge men to the writing of books, perhaps the most worthy,
worthier by far than the love of fame, is the belief that the author
has something to say which will commend itsself to his fellow-man,
which perchance his fellow-man may be the better for hearing. If I
have fulfilled in some measure even the first of these conditions,
then has my labor not been in vain.
HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT,
in _Literary Industries._
DECEMBER 5.
LAW IN THE EARLY MINING-CAMPS.
Here, in a new land, under new conditions, subjected to tremendous
pressure and strain, but successfully resisting them, were associated
bodies of freemen bound together for a time by common interests, ruled
by equal laws, and owning allegiance to no higher authority than their
own sense of right and wrong. They held meetings, chose officers,
decided disputes, meted out a stern and swift punishment to offenders,
and managed their local affairs with entire success; and the growth of
their committees was proceeding at such a rapid rate, that days and
weeks were often sufficient for vital changes, which, in more staid
communities, would have required months or even years.
CHARLES HOWARD SHINN,
in _Mining Camps._
DECEMBER 6.
New towns were laid out in the valleys to supply the camps, and those
already established grew with astonishing rapidity. Stockton, for
instance, increased in three months from a solitary ranch-house to a
canvas city of one thousand inhabitants. Sacramento also became a
canvas city, whose dust-clouds whirled, and men, mules, and oxen
toiled; where boxes, barrels, bales innumerable, were piled in the
open air, no shelter being needed for months. For the City Hotel,
Sacramento, thirty thousand dollars per year was paid as rent,
although it was only a small frame building. The Parker House, San
Francisco, cost thirty thousand dollars to build, and rented for
fifteen thousand dollars per month.
CHARLES HOWARD SHINN,
in _Mining Camps._
DECEMBER 7.
The prospector is the advance agent of progress, civilization and
prosperity. * * * It is for the sight of a yellow streak in his pan
that he has been tempted to endure the fatigue, cold, and hunger of
the mountains, and the heat, thirst and horror of the desert.
The prospector is a man of small pretensions, of peaceful disposition,
indomitable will, boundless perseverance, remarkable endurance,
undoubted courage, irrepressible hopefulness, and unlimited
hospitality He is the friend of every man till he has evidence that
the man is his enemy, and he is the most respected man in the mining
regions of the West.
ARTHUR J. BURDICK,
in _The Mystic Mid-Region._
DECEMBER 8.
To a little camp of 1848 a lad of sixteen came one day, footsore,
weary, hungry, and penniless. There were thirty robust and cheerful
miners at work in the ravine; and the lad sat on the bank, watching
them awhile in silence, his face telling the sad story of his
fortunes. At last one stalwart miner spoke to his fellows, saying:
"Boys, I'll work an hour for that chap if you will."
At the end of the hour a hundred dollars' worth of gold dust was laid
in the youth's handkerchief. The miners made out a list of tools and
necessaries.
"You go," they said, "and buy these, and come back. We'll have a good
claim staked out for you. Then you've got to paddle for yourself."
Thus genuine and unconventional was the hospitality of the
mining-camp.
CHARLES HOWARD SHINN,
in __Mining Camps._
DECEMBER 9.
Down in the gulch bottoms were the old placer diggings. Elaborate
little ditches for the deflection of water, long cradles for the
separation of gold, decayed rockers, and shining in the sun the tons
and tons of pay dirt which had been turned over pound by pound in the
concentrating of its treasure. Some of the old cabins still stood. It
was all deserted now, save for the few who kept trail for the
freighters, or who tilled the restricted bottom lands of the flats.
Road-runners racked away down the paths; squirrels scurried over
worn-out placers, jays screamed and chattered in and out of the
abandoned cabins. And the warm California sun embalmed it all in a
peaceful forgetfulness.
STEWART EDWARD WHITE,
in _The Mountains._
DECEMBER 10.
GOD IS EVERYWHERE.
Under the grass, the flowers, and the sod
Go deep enough and you will find God.
The royal red-gold of the sunset glow
A veil for His unseen face doth show.
And all the star-cool vastnesses of night
Still hide Him not from the Spirit's sight.
I will see Him in all, I will trust Him in all,
I will love but the God, to the God will I call.
Till God, full and perfect, every soul shall reveal,
And God's glorious purpose each life shall fulfill;
Till the earth showeth whole, without break, without seam,
Till God's truth and God's beauty stand clear and supreme.
MARY RUSSELL MILLS,
in _Fellowship Magazine._
DECEMBER 11.
THE KILLING OF THE DEVIL, AS TOLD IN THE
LANGUEDOC FOLK-TALE OF THE THREE STRONG MEN.