The California Birthday Book Part 22

JUNE 16.

Mrs. Bryton surveyed the coa.r.s.e furnis.h.i.+ngs of the adobe with disgust as she was led to the one room where she could secure sleeping accommodation. It contained three beds with as many different colored spreads, queer little pillows, and drawn-work on one towel hanging on a nail. The floor had once been tiled with square mission bricks; but many were broken, some were gone, and the empty s.p.a.ces were so many traps for unwary feet.

MARAH ELLIS RYAN, in _For the Soul of Rafael._

JUNE 17.

Of all the old grandees who, not forty years before, had called the Californias their own; living a life of Arcadian magnificence, troubled by few cares, a life of riding over vast estates clad in silk and lace, _botas_ and _sombreros_, mounted upon steeds as gorgeously caparisoned as themselves, eating, drinking, serenading at the gratings of beautiful women, gambling, horse-racing, taking part in splendid religious festivals, with only the languid excitement of an occasional war between rival governors to disturb the placid surface of their lives--of them all Don Roberto was a man of wealth and consequence today.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _The Californians._

JUNE 18.

The house was a ruinous adobe in the old Mexican quarter of Los Angeles. The great, bare, whitewashed room contained only the altar and a long mirror in a tarnished gilt frame; one, the symbol of earthly vanity; the other, the very portal of heaven. All the carved mahogany furniture had long since gone to buy food and charcoal or a rare black gown.

AMANDA MATHEWS, in _The Old Pueblo._

All sorts of men came here in early days--poor men of good family who had failed at home, or were too proud to work there; desperadoes, adventurers, men of middle life and broken fortunes--all of them expecting everything from the new land, and ready to tear the heart out of any one who got in their way. * * * Of course, there are Californians and Californians.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON, in _A Whirl Asunder._

JUNE 19.

Beneath the surface--ah, there lie a numerous host, sad relics of bygone times. In our cities in poverty, wretchedness, and, alas! too often in dissipation, or, happier fate, in canyon or on hillside where woodman's axe is heard, one may find men wearily, sadly, often faithfully performing their daily labor who were born heirs to leagues of land where ranged mighty herds of cattle and horses--men who as boys, perhaps, played their games of quoits with golden slugs from the Indian baskets sitting about the courtyard of their fathers' houses.

HELEN ELLIOTT BANDINI, in _Some of Our Spanish Families._

JUNE 20.

Jameson's cord led out to the Spanish quarter. Some old senoras, their heads covered with shawls, their clothes redolent with the smell of garlic, from time to time shambled across his pathway. They were heavy old women, in worn flapping slippers and uncorseted figures. * * *

With them, this saying, "It is time to be old," to throw down the game like some startled player, and cast one's self on the mercies of the Virgin, had come twenty years or so before it should.

FRANCES CHARLES, in _The Siege of Youth._

A JUNE WEDDING.

The sweetheart of Summer weds today-- Pride of the Wild Rose clan: A b.u.t.terfly fay For a bridesmaid gay, And a b.u.mblebee for best man.

CHARLES ELMER JENNEY, in _Out West, June_, 1902.

JUNE 21.

They went to a one-room adobe on the plaza. A rich, greasy odor came out from it with puffs of the onion-laden smoke of frying things which blurred the light of the one candle set in the neck of a bottle. * * *

In the centre of the floor a circle of blackened stones held a fire of wood coals, on the top of which rested a big clay griddle. Cakes of ground corn were frying there, and on the stove were _enchiladas_ and _tamales_ and _chili-con-carne_ being kept warm. The air was thick with the pungent, strong smells.

GWENDOLEN OVERTON, in _The Golden Chain._

JUNE 22.

The homely house furnis.h.i.+ngs seemed to leap out of the darkness; the stove, the littered table, and the couch, the iron crucifix, and the carved cradle in the corner--all his long life Juan will see them so--and 'Cencion turned; the dusky veil was blown and rent like the sea mist, revealing--Holy Mother of Heaven! her father, Cenaga, the outlaw! Juan Lopez fell on his knees below the window, the smoking rifle clattered from his broken grasp, and the missile sped, aimless and harmless, high into the adobe wall.

GERTRUDE B. MILLARD, in _An Outlaw's Daughter, S.F. Argonaut, Nov._, 1896.

IN HUMBOLDT.

Dim in the noonday fullness, Dark in the day's sweet morn-- So sacred and deep are the canyons Where the beautiful rivers are born.

LILLIAN H. SHUEY, in _Among the Redwoods._

JUNE 23.

The glow of the days of Comstock glory was still in the air. San Francisco was still the city of gold and silver. The bonanza kings had not left it, but were trying to accommodate themselves to the palaces they were rearing with their loose millions. Society yet retained its cosmopolitan tone, careless, brilliant, and unconventional. There were figures in it that had made it famous--men who began life with a pick and shovel and ended it in an orgy of luxury; women, whose habits of early poverty fell off them like a garment, and who, carried away by their power, displayed the barbaric caprices of Roman empresses.

The sudden possession of vast wealth had intoxicated this people, lifting them from the level of the commonplace into a saturnalia of extravagance. Poverty, the only restraint many of them had ever felt, was gone. Money had made them lawless, whimsical, bizarre. It had developed all-conquering personalities, potent individualities. They were still playing with it, wondering at it, throwing it about.

GERALDINE BONNER, in _Tomorrow's Tangle._

JUNE 24.

Menlo Park, originally a large Spanish grant, had long since been cut up into country places for what may be termed the "Old Families of San Francisco!" The eight or ten families that owned this haughty precinct were as exclusive, as conservative, as any group of ancient families in Europe. Many of them had been established here for twenty years, none for less than fifteen. This fact set the seal of gentle blood upon them for all time in the annals of California.