The California Birthday Book Part 40

The b.u.t.terfly--that fairy-glancing thing-- Ethereal blossom of the light and air!

No longer poises on its fluttering wing; How could it hover in this bleak despair?

FRANCES M. MILNE, in _For Today._

NOVEMBER 3.

During this first autumn rain, those of us who are so fortunate as to live in the country are conscious of a strange odor pervading all the air. It is as though Dame Nature were brewing a vast cup of herb tea, mixing in the fragrant infusion all the plants dried and stored so carefully during the summer. When the clouds vanish after this baptismal shower, everything is charmingly fresh and pure, and we have some of the rarest of days. Then the little seeds, harbored through the long summer in earth's bosom, burst their coats and push up their tender leaves, till on hillside and valley-floor appears a delicate mist of green, which gradually confirms itself into a soft, rich carpet--and all the world is verdure clad. Then we begin to look eagerly for our first flowers.

MARY ELIZABETH PARSONS, in _The Wild Flowers of California._

NOVEMBER 4.

In basketry the Pomo Indians of California found an outlet for the highest conceptions of art that their race was capable of. Protected by their isolation from other tribes, they worked out their ideas undisturbed--with every incentive for excellence they had reached a height in basketry when the American first disturbed them which has never been equaled--not only by no other Indian tribe, but by no other people in the world in any age. These stolid Indian women have a knowledge of materials and their preparation, a delicacy of touch, an artistic conception of symmetry, of form and design, a versatility in varying and inventing beautiful designs, and an eye for color, which place their work on a high plane of art.

CARL PURDY, in _Out West._

NOVEMBER 5.

WHEN IT RAINS IN CALIFORNY.

When it rains in Californy It makes the tourist mad, But folks that's got the crops to raise Is feelin' mighty glad; I stand out in the showers, Wet as a drownded rat, And watch the grain a-growin', And the cattle gettin' fat.

Sorry for them Easterners, Kickin' like Sam Hill, But the sun-kissed land is thirsty And wants to drink its fill.

Oh, hear the poppies laughin', And the happy mockers sing, When it rains in Californy, Through the glory of the spring.

JOHN S. McGROARTY, in _Just California._

NOVEMBER 6.

The broad valley had darkened. The mountains opposite had lost their sharp details and dulled to an opaque silver blue in the mists of twilight. They had become great shadow mountains, broad spirit ma.s.ses, and seemed to melt imperceptibly from form to form toward the horizon....

There had come a harmony more perfect than life could ever give. It included all their love that had gone before and something greater, vaster--all life, all nature, and all G.o.d.

HAROLD S. SYMMES, in _The Divine Benediction, Putnam's, Oct._, 1906.

NOVEMBER 7.

AFTER THE RAIN.

"Sweet fields stand dressed in living green,"

That late were brown and bare.

The twitter of the calling birds With music fills the air.

Was ever sky so heavenly blue-- "Clear s.h.i.+ning after rain!"

Was ever wind so soft and pure, To breathe away our pain!

Oh, roses white, and roses red, Your fragrant leaves unfold!

Oh, lily, lift your chalice pure And show your heart of gold!

FRANCES MARGARET MILNE, in _For To-day._

NOVEMBER 8.

She does not appear in public, and her name is seldom seen in the 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 G.o.d 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._