y 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 AND OTHER CALIFORNIA SKETCHES 
 
THE SMILING 
 HILL-TOP 
 
 AND OTHER CALIFORNIA SKETCHES 
 
 BY 
 
 JULIA M. SLOANE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 CARLETON M. WINSLOW 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1919 
 
Copyright, 1919, by 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 Published October, igzg 
 
 3^ 
 
TO 
 
 MY THREE COMPANIONS OF THE ROAD 
 
 ONE LARGE AND TWO SMALL 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK 
 
 IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED 
 
 A ' > i.'-> C\ * 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 Introduction 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 The Smiling Hill-Top 
 
 5 
 
 A California Poppy 
 
 19 
 
 Gardeners 
 
 35 
 
 Thorns 
 
 55 
 
 The Gypsy Trail 
 
 n 
 
 An Adventure in Solitude 
 
 94 
 
 A Sabine Farm 
 
 116 
 
 The Land of "Whynot" 
 
 132 
 
 Where the Trade Wind Blows 
 
 155 
 
 Sunkist 
 
 176 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 AND OTHER CALIFORNIA SKETCHES 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE following sketches are entirely in- 
 formal. They do not cover the sub- 
 ject of Southern California in any way. 
 In fact, they contain no information what- 
 ever, either about the missions or history 
 — a little, perhaps, about the climate and 
 the fruits and flowers of the earth, but that 
 has crept in more or less unavoidably. 
 They are the record of what happened to 
 happen to a fairly light-hearted family who 
 left New England in search of rest and 
 health. There are six of us, two grown- 
 ups, two boys, and two dogs. We came 
 for a year and, like many another family, 
 
 % [I] 
 
: : :• •.*.: ;'-.T??E : SRIILJNG HILL-TOP 
 • • ••«*«* t*'*«* * ' 
 
 have taken root for all our days — or so it 
 seems now. 
 
 The reactions of more or less tempera- 
 mental people, suddenly transplanted from 
 a rigorous climate to sunshine and the 
 beauty and abundance of life in Southern 
 California, perhaps give a too highly col- 
 ored picture, so please make allowance for 
 the bounce of the ball. I mean to be quite 
 fair. It doesn't rain from May to October, 
 but when it does, it can rain in a way to 
 make Noah feel entirely at home. Unfor- 
 tunately, that is when so many of our visi- 
 tors come — in February ! They catch bad 
 colds, the roses aren't in bloom, and alto- 
 gether they feel that they have been basely 
 deceived. 
 
 We rarely have thunder-storms, or at 
 least anything you could dignify by that 
 name, but we do have horrid little shaky 
 
 [2] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 earthquakes. We don't have mosquitoes 
 in hordes, such as the Jersey coast pro- 
 vides, but we do sometimes come home and 
 hear what sounds like a cosy tea-kettle in 
 the courtyard, whereupon the defender of 
 the family reaches for his gun and there is 
 one rattlesnake less to dread. 
 
 On our hill-top there are quantities of 
 wild creatures — quail, rabbits, doves, and 
 ground squirrels and, unfortunately, a 
 number of social outcasts. Never shall I 
 forget an epic incident in our history — the 
 head of the family in pajamas at dawn, in 
 mortal combat with a small black-and- 
 white creature, chasing it through the 
 cloisters with the garden hose. Oh, yes, 
 there is plenty of adventure still left, even 
 though we don't have to cross the prairies 
 in a wagon. 
 
 People who know California and love it, 
 
 [3] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 I hope may enjoy comparing notes with 
 me. People who have never been here 
 and who vaguely think of it as a happy 
 hunting-ground for lame ducks and black 
 sheep, I should like to tempt across the 
 Rockies that they might see how much 
 more it is than that. It may be a lotus 
 land to some, to many it truly seems the 
 promised land. 
 
 "Shall we be stepping westward ?" 
 
 [4l 
 
No one should attempt to live on top 
 of an adobe hill one mile from a 
 small town which has been brought up on 
 the Declaration of Independence, without 
 previously taking a course in plain and 
 fancy wheedling. This is the mature judg- 
 ment of a lady who has tried it. Not even 
 in California ! 
 
 [51 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 When we first took possession of our hill- 
 top early one June, nothing was farther 
 from my thoughts. "Suma Paz," "Per- 
 fect Peace," as the place was called, came 
 to me from a beloved aunt who had truly 
 found it that. With it came a cow, a mis- 
 understood motor, and a wardrobe trunk. 
 A Finnish lady came with the cow, and my 
 brother-in-law's chauffeur graciously con- 
 sented to come with the motor. The trunk 
 was empty. It was all so complete that 
 the backbone of the family, suddenly 
 summoned on business, departed for the 
 East, feeling that he had left us comforta- 
 bly estabHshed for the month of his ab- 
 sence. The motor purred along the nine 
 miles to the railroad station without the 
 least indication of the various kinds of in- 
 ternal complications about to develop, and 
 he boarded the train, beautifully composed 
 [6] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 in mind, while we returned to our hill- 
 top. 
 
 It is a most enchanting spot. A red- 
 tiled bungalow is built about a courtyard 
 with cloisters and a fountain, while vines 
 and flowers fill the air with the most deli- 
 cious perfume of heliotrope, mignonette, 
 and jasmine. Beyond the big living-room 
 extends a terrace with boxes of deep and 
 pale pink geraniums against a blue sea, 
 that might be the Bay of Naples, except 
 that Vesuvius is lacking. It is so lovely 
 that after three years it still seems like a 
 dream. We are only one short look from 
 the Pacific Ocean, that ocean into whose 
 mists the sun sets in flaming purple and 
 gold, or the more soft tones of shimmering 
 gray and shell-pink. We sit on our terrace 
 feeling as if we were in a proscenium box 
 on the edge of the world, and watch the 
 [71 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 ever-varying splendor. At night there is 
 the same sense of infinity, with the un- 
 clouded stars above, and only the twinkling 
 lights of motors threading their way down 
 the zigzag of the coast road as it descends 
 the cliffs to the plain below us. These 
 lights make up in part for the fewness of 
 the harbor lights in the bay. The Pacific 
 is a lonely ocean. There are so few harbors 
 along the coast where small boats can find 
 shelter that yachts and pleasure craft 
 hardly exist. Occasionally we see the 
 smoke of a steamer on its way to or from 
 ports of Lower California, as far south as 
 the point where the curtain drops on poor 
 distracted Mexico, for there trade ceases 
 and anarchy begins. There is a strip of 
 land, not belonging to the United States, 
 called Lower California, controlled by a 
 handsome soldierly creature, Governor 
 [8] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 Cantu, whose personal qualities and mo- 
 tives seem nicely adapted to holding that 
 much, at least, of Mexico in equiHbrium. 
 Only last summer he was the guest of our 
 small but progressive village at a kind of 
 love feast, where we cemented our friend- 
 ship with whale steaks and ginger ale dis- 
 pensed on the beach, to the accompani- 
 ment of martial music, while flags of 
 both countries shared the breeze. Though 
 much that is picturesque, especially in the 
 way of food — enciladas, tamales and the 
 like — strays across the border, bandits do 
 not, and we enjoy a sense of security that 
 encourages basking in the sun. Just one 
 huge sheet of water, broken by islands, Hes 
 between us and the cherry blossoms of 
 Japan! There is a thrill about its very 
 emptiness, and yet since I have seen the 
 Golden Gate I know that that thrill is 
 l9] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 nothing to the sensation of seeing a sailing 
 ship with her canvas spread, bound for the 
 far East. From the West to the East the 
 spell draws. First from the East to the 
 West; from the cold and storms of New 
 England to our land of sun it beckons, and 
 then unless we hold tight, the lure of the 
 South Seas and the glamour of the Far 
 East calls us. I know just how it would 
 be. Perhaps my spirit craves adventuring 
 the more for the years my body has had 
 to spend in a chaise longue or hammock, 
 fighting my way out of a shadow. Any- 
 way, I have heard the call, but I have put 
 cotton in my ears and am content that life 
 allows me three months out of the twelve 
 of magic and my hill-top. 
 
 There is a town, of course — there has to 
 be, else where would we post our letters. 
 It's as busy as a beehive with its clubs and 
 
 [10] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 model playgrounds, its New Thought and 
 its "Journal," but I don't have to be of it. 
 There are only so many hours in the day. 
 I go around "in circles" all winder; in sum- 
 mer I wish to invite my sdul, and there 
 isn't time for both. I think I am regarded 
 by the people in the village as a mixture of 
 recluse and curmudgeon, but who cares if 
 they can live on a hill ? 
 
 One flaw there was in the picture, and 
 that is where the first experiment in whee- 
 dling came in. A large telegraph pole on 
 our property line bisected the horizon like 
 one of the parallels on a map. It seemed 
 to us at times to assume the proportions of 
 the Washington Monument. I firmly 
 made up my mind to have it down if I did 
 nothing else that summer, and I succeeded, 
 though I began in July and it was not till 
 October that it finally fell crushing into the 
 
 [II] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 sage brush, and for the first time we saw 
 the uninterrupted curve of beach melting 
 into the pale greenish cliffs beyond. 
 
 The property on which the pole stood 
 belonged to a real-estate man. He was 
 pleasant and full of rosy dreams of a sub- 
 urban villa resort, the gem of the Pacific 
 Coast. That part was easy. He and I 
 together visited the offices of the corpora- 
 tions owning the wires on that pole. As 
 they had no legal right of way they had 
 to promise to remove it and many others, 
 to the tune of several hundred dollars. 
 Nothing was left them but the game of de- 
 lay. They told me their men were busy, 
 that all the copper wire was held up by a 
 landslide in the Panama Canal, that the 
 superintendent was on a vacation, etc. 
 However, the latter gentleman had to 
 come back some time, and when he did I 
 plaintively told him my troubles. I said 
 
 [12] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 I had had a very hard and disappointing 
 summer, and that it would soothe me 
 enormously to have one look at that view 
 as the Lord intended it to be, before I had 
 to go away for the winter, that it was in 
 his power to give me that pleasure, etc. 
 
 Perhaps it was an unusual method, but 
 it worked so well that I have often em- 
 ployed it since. I may say incidentally 
 that it is of no use with the ice man. 
 Perhaps dealing with merchandise below 
 zero keeps his resistance unusually good. 
 I have never been able to extract a pound 
 of ice from him, even for illness, except on 
 his regular day and in my proper turn. I 
 think I should also except the fish man, 
 who always promises to call Fridays and 
 never does; much valuable time have I 
 lost in searching the highways and byways 
 for his old horse and white wagon. 
 
 Next to the execution of the telegraph 
 
 [13] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 pole I felt a little grass lawn to be of the 
 utmost importance. Nothing could better 
 show how short a time I had been in Cali- 
 fornia than not to realize that even if you 
 can afford to dine on caviar, pate de fois 
 gras, and fresh mushrooms, grass may be 
 beyond your means. I bravely had the 
 ground prepared and sown. First, the 
 boys' governess watered it so hard that it 
 removed all the seed, so we tried again. 
 Then the water was shut off while pipes 
 were being laid on the highway below, and 
 only at dawn and after dark could we get 
 a drop. I did the watering in my night- 
 gown, and was soon rewarded by a little 
 green fuzz. Then all the small rabbits for 
 miles around gathered there for breakfast. 
 They were so tame you could hardly drive 
 them away, so I invited the brothers who 
 kept the hardware store in the village to 
 
 1 14] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 come up and shoot them. They came 
 gladly and brought their friends, but were 
 so very anxious to help that I thought they 
 were going to shoot the children too, and 
 had politely to withdraw my invitation. 
 The gardener and I then made a luscious 
 compound of bacon grease and rough-on- 
 rats, which we served on lettuce leaves 
 and left about the edges of the grass plot. 
 Did you ever hear a rabbit scream ? They 
 do. I felt Hke Lucretia Borgia, and de- 
 cided that if they wanted the lawn they 
 could have it. Oddly enough, a lot of 
 grass came up in quite another part of the 
 garden. I suppose it was the first planting 
 that Fraulein had blown away with the 
 hose! We often have surprises like that 
 in gardening. We once planted window- 
 boxes of mignonette and they came up 
 petunias — volunteer petunias at that. Of 
 [IS] 
 
THE SMILING HILD-TOP 
 
 course, it all adds to the interest and ad- 
 venture of life. 
 
 After the water-pipes were laid the gas 
 deserted us, and we had a few meals cooked 
 on all the little alcohol lamps we could 
 muster. Then the motor fell desperately 
 ill, and from then on was usually to be 
 found strewed over the floor of the garage. 
 Jerome K. Jerome says about bicycles, that 
 if you have one you must decide whether 
 you will ride it or overhaul it. This ap- 
 plies as well to motors. We decided to 
 overhaul ours with a few brief excursions, 
 just long enough to give an opportunity 
 for having it towed home. One late after- 
 noon we were hurrying across the mesa to 
 supper, when our magneto flew off* into the 
 ditch, scattering screws in all directions. 
 Fortunately, a kind of Knight Errant to 
 our family appeared just in the nick of 
 [i6] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 time to take us home and send help to the 
 wreck. I once kept a garage in San Diego 
 open half an hour after closing time by a 
 Garuso sob in my voice over the telephone, 
 while my brother-in-law's miserable chauf- 
 feur hurried over for an indispensable part. 
 
 Poppy, the cow, contributed her bit — it 
 wasn't milk, either — to this complicated 
 month, but deserves a chapter all to her- 
 self. 
 
 The backbone of the family found my 
 letters "so entertaining'' at first, but grad- 
 ually a note of uneasiness crept into his 
 replies after I had told him that Joedy had 
 fallen out of the machine and had just 
 escaped our rear wheels, and that the pre- 
 vious night we had had three earthquakes. 
 I had never felt an earthquake before, and 
 it will be some time before I develop the 
 nonchalance of a seasoned Cahfornian, 
 
 [I?] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 whose way of referring to one is like saying, 
 "Oh, yes, we did have a few drops of rain 
 last night." One more little tremble and 
 I should have gathered the family for a 
 night in the garden. 
 
 After an incendiary had set fire to sev- 
 eral houses in town, and Fraulein had had 
 a peculiar seizure that turned her a delicate 
 sea-green, while she murmured, "I am 
 going to die," I sat down and took counsel 
 with myself. What next ? I bought a 
 rattlesnake antidote outfit — that, at least, 
 I could anticipate, and then I went out 
 with the axe and hacked out the words 
 '*Suma Paz" from the pergola. We are 
 now "The Smiling Hill-Top," for though 
 peace does not abide with us, we keep 
 right on smiling. 
 
 [i8] 
 
MUfOfaia^ 
 
 I 
 
 T would doubtless be the proper thing 
 for me to begin by quoting Stevenson: 
 
 "The friendly cow, all red and white, 
 I love with all my heart," etc. 
 
 but Yd rather not. In the first place she 
 wasn't, and in the second place I didn't. 
 The only thing about it that fits is the color 
 scheme; Poppy was a red-and-white cow, 
 
 [19] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 or rather a kind of strawberry roan. 
 Perhaps she didn't like being inherited 
 (she came to us with "The Smiling Hill- 
 Top"), or maybe she was lonely on the 
 hillside and felt that it was too far from 
 town. Almost all the natives of the vil- 
 lage feel that way; or perhaps she took one 
 of those aversions to me that aren't founded 
 on anything in particular. At any rate, I 
 never saw any expression but resentment 
 in her eye, so that no warm friendship ever 
 grew up between us. 
 
 The only other cow we ever boarded — I 
 use the word advisedly — did not feel any 
 more drawn to me than Poppy. Evidently 
 I am not the type that cows entwine their 
 affections about. She was Pennsylvania 
 Dutch and shared Poppy's sturdy appe- 
 tite, though it all went to figure. Two 
 quaint maiden ladies next door took care 
 
 [20] 
 
A CALIFORNIA POPPY 
 
 of her and handed the milk over our fence, 
 while it was still foaming in the pail. Miss 
 Tabitha and Miss Letitia — how patient 
 they were with me in my abysmal igno- 
 rance of the really vital things of life, such 
 as milking, preserving, and pickling ! They 
 undertook it all for me, but in the end I 
 had a small laugh at their expense. I 
 gave them my grandmother's recipes for 
 brandied peaches and pickled peaches, and 
 though rigidly temperance, they consented 
 to do a dozen jars of each. Alas ! they 
 mingled the two — now as I write it down I 
 wonder if perhaps they did it on purpose, 
 on the principle that drug stores now put 
 a dash of carbolic in our 95 per cent alco- 
 hol. In which case, of course, the joke is 
 on me. 
 
 To return to Poppy. At first I was de- 
 lighted with the thought of unlimited milk, 
 [21] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 bought a churn and generally prepared to 
 enjoy being a dairymaid. I soon found 
 out my mistake. Poppy was "drying up" 
 just as the vegetation was. The Finn 
 woman who milked her morning and 
 night, and who seemed to be in much closer 
 sympathy with her than I ever hoped to 
 be, said that what she must have was 
 green food. Having no lawn, for reasons 
 previously stated, that was a poser. My 
 brother-in-law's chauffeur, who was lent 
 to me for a month, unbent sufficiently to 
 go to town and press a bill into the hand 
 of the head gardener of "The Place" of 
 the village, so that we might have the 
 grass mowed from that lawn. Alas for 
 frail human nature ! It seems that he dis- 
 appeared from view about once in so often, 
 and that his feet at that moment were 
 trembhng on the brink. So he sUd over 
 
 [22] 
 
A CALIFORNIA POPPY 
 
 the edge, and the next man in charge had 
 other friends with other cows. I tried the 
 vegetable man next. He was a pleasant 
 Greek, and promised me all his beet-tops 
 and wilted lettuce. That was good as far 
 as it went, but Poppy would go through a 
 crate of lettuce as I would a bunch of 
 grapes, and I couldn't see that we got any 
 more milk. The Finn woman said that 
 the flies annoyed her and that no cow 
 would give as much milk if she were con- 
 stantly kicking and stamping to get them 
 off. She advised me to get some burlap 
 for her. That seemed simple, but it 
 wasn't. Nothing was simple connected 
 with that cow. I found I could only get 
 stiff burlap, such as you put on walls, in 
 art green, and I couldn't picture Poppy in 
 a kimono of that as being anything but 
 wretched. Finally, in a hardware store, 
 
 [23] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 the proprietor took an interest in my sad 
 tale, and said he'd had some large ship- 
 ments come in lately wrapped in burlap, 
 and that I could have a piece. He person- 
 ally went to the cellar for it and gave it to 
 me as a present. 
 
 Much cheered, I hurried home and we 
 put Poppy into her brown jacket, securing 
 it neatly with strings. By morning, I re- 
 gret to say, she had kicked it to shreds. 
 Also the Finn woman decided that she 
 needed higher pay and more milk as her 
 perquisite. Since we were obviously "city 
 folks" she thought she might as well hold 
 us up, and she felt sure that I couldn't get 
 any one in her place. I surprised her by 
 calmly replying that she could go when 
 her week was up, and I would get some 
 one else. It was a touch of rhetoric on 
 my part, for I didn't suppose that I could 
 
 [24] 
 
A CALIFORNIA POPPY 
 
 any more than she did, though I was re- 
 solved to make a gallant fight, even if I 
 had to enlist the services of the dry cleaner, 
 who was the only person who voluntarily 
 called almost daily to see if we had any 
 work to be done. 
 
 The joke of it was that I had no trouble 
 at all. A youth of sixteen, who viewed 
 me in the light of ** opportunity knocking 
 at the door," gladly accepted my terms. 
 He was the son of the foreman at a dairy 
 in the neighborhood, and rode over night 
 and morning on a staid old mare loaned 
 him by the dairyman. 
 
 Donald was bright and willing, and 
 eventually was able to get near enough to 
 Poppy to milk her, though she never liked 
 him. The Finn woman was the only per- 
 son with whom she was in sympathy. I 
 think they were both Socialists. Donald 
 [2S] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 said we must do something about the 
 flies. I told him about my attempts to 
 dress her in burlap, and we concluded that 
 a spray was the thing. Donald brought 
 a nice antiseptic smelling mixture, and we 
 put it on her with the rose sprayer. Prob- 
 ably we were too impulsive; anyway, the 
 milk was very queer. Did you ever eat 
 saffron cake in Cornwall ? It tasted like 
 that. The children declined it firmly, and 
 I sympathized with them. After practice 
 we managed to spray her in a more limited 
 way. 
 
 By this time we were having sherbet 
 instead of ice-cream for Sunday dinner, 
 and my ideas of a private cow had greatly 
 altered. 
 
 I have a black list that has been growing 
 through life; things I wish never to have 
 again: tapioca pudding, fresh eggs if I 
 
 [26] 
 
A CALIFORNIA POPPY 
 
 have to hear the hen brag about it at 5 a.m., 
 tripe, and home-grown milk, and to this 
 list I have lately added cheese. Every 
 one is familiar with the maxim that rest is 
 
 a change of occupation. J , being 
 
 tired of Latin verbs, Greek roots, and dull 
 scholars generally, took up some irfferest- 
 ing laboratory work after we emigrated to 
 California. Growing Bulgarian bacilli to 
 make fermented milk that would keep us 
 all perennially amiable while we grew to 
 be octogenarians, was one thing, but when 
 the company, lured by the oratory of a 
 cheese expert, were beguiled into making 
 cream cheese — ^just the sort of cheese that 
 Lucullus and Ponce de Leon both wanted 
 but did not find — our troubles began. 
 The company is composed of one minister 
 with such an angelic expression that no one 
 can refuse to sign anything if he holds out 
 
 [27] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 a pen ; one aviator with youth, exuberant 
 spirits, and a New England setness of pur- 
 pose; one schoolmaster — strong on facing 
 facts and callous to camouflage, and one 
 temperamental cheese man. (It turned 
 out afterward, however, that the janitor 
 could make the best cheese of them all.) 
 Developing a cheese business is a good 
 deal like conducting a love afFair — it blows 
 hot and cold in a nerve-racking way. It 
 is "the PubHc.'' You never can tell about 
 the PubHc ! Sometimes it wants small 
 packages for a small sum, or large pack- 
 ages for more, but mostly, what it frankly 
 wants is a large package for a small sum ! 
 Some dealers didn't like the trade-mark. 
 It was changed. It then turned out that 
 the first trade-mark was really what was 
 wanted. Then the cheese man fell des- 
 perately ill, which was a calamity, as 
 
 [28] 
 
A CALIFORNIA POPPY 
 
 neither the Book of Common Prayer, an 
 aeroplane, nor a Latin Grammar is what 
 you need in such a crisis. 
 
 J waded dejectedly about in whey 
 
 until a new cheese man took the helm. 
 He also fell ill. I always supposed that 
 making cheese was a kind of healthful, 
 bucolic occupation, but I was wrong. Ap- 
 parently every one that tries it steers 
 straight for a nervous break-down. I have 
 gotten to a point myself where, if any one 
 quotes "Miss MufFet" to me, I emit a 
 low, threatening growl. 
 
 However, Fm digressing, for our life was 
 not complicated by cheese or Bulgarian 
 bacilli till much later (and when you think 
 of what the Bulgos have done to the Bal- 
 kans we can't really complain). 
 
 That first summer Poppy seemed care 
 enough. A neighbor across the canyon, 
 
 [29] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 who had known her in her girlhood, took 
 too vital an interest in her daily life. It 
 was maddening to be called on the tele- 
 phone at all hours and told that Poppy had 
 had no fresh drinking water since such 
 and such an hour, or to have Donald way- 
 laid and admonished to give her plenty to 
 eat. That she had, as my bills at the feed 
 and fuel store can prove. 
 
 At this juncture the backbone of the 
 family fell desperately ill, and I flew to 
 the hospital where he was, leaving Poppy 
 to kick and stamp and lose tethering pins 
 and dry up at her own sweet will. After 
 the danger and strain were over, I found 
 myself also tucked into a hospital bed, 
 while a trained nurse watched over the 
 children and Poppy. One morning a fran- 
 tic letter arrived. Poppy had dried up ! 
 According to what lights we had to guide 
 
 [30] 
 
A CALIFORNIA POPPY 
 
 us, it was far too soon, but reasoning did 
 not alter the fact. There was no milk for 
 the boys, and the dairyman had always 
 declined to deliver milk on our hill, it was 
 outside his route 1 Two helpless persons 
 flat on their backs in a hospital are at a 
 disadvantage in a crisis like that. How- 
 ever, one must always find a way. I think 
 I have expressed myself elsewhere as to 
 the value of wheedling. It seemed our 
 only hope. I wrote a letter to the owner 
 of that dairy, in which I frankly recognized 
 the fact that our hill was steep and the 
 road bad, that it was out of his way and 
 probably he had no milk to spare, any- 
 way, but that Billie and Joe had to 
 have milk, and that their parents were 
 both down and out, and that it was his 
 golden opportunity to do, not a stroke of 
 business, but an act of kindness! It 
 
 [31] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 worked. He has been serving us with milk 
 ever since, and Fd Hke to testify that his 
 heart is in the right place. 
 
 Before I leave the subject of wheedling, 
 I might add that if it is a useful art in sum- 
 mer, in winter it is priceless. After a 
 week of rain, such as we know how to 
 have in these parts, adobe becomes very 
 slippery. This hill is steep, and I have 
 spent a week on its top in February, feeling 
 like the princess in the fairy tale, who lived 
 on a glass hill ready to marry the first 
 suitor who reached the top; only in my 
 case there were no suitors at all; even the 
 telegraph boy declined to try his luck. 
 
 Speaking of telegrams, I think that as 
 a source of interest we have been a boon 
 to this village. One departing friend tele- 
 graphed in Latin, beginning "Salve atque 
 vale." This was a poser. The operator 
 tried to telephone it, but gave that up. 
 
 [32] 
 
A CALIFORNIA POPPY 
 
 He said, "It's either French or a code." 
 The following season he referred to it 
 again, remarking, *'A telegram like that 
 just gets my goat." 
 
 But to return to the now thoroughly dry 
 Poppy. We determined to sell her, in 
 spite of the fact that we never are very 
 successful in selling anything. Things al- 
 ways seem at their bottom price when we 
 have something to dispose of, while we 
 usually buy when the demand outruns the 
 supply. Still, I once conducted several 
 quite successful transactions with an an- 
 tique dealer in Pennsylvania. I think I 
 was said to be the only living woman who 
 had ever gotten the best of a bargain with 
 him, so I was unanimously elected by the 
 family as the one to open negotiations. A 
 customer actually appeared. We gradu- 
 ally approached a price by the usual 
 stages, I dwelling on his advantage in hav- 
 
 [33] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 ing the calf and trying not to let him see 
 my carking fear that we might be the un- 
 willing godparents of it if he didn't hurry 
 up and come to terms. At last the matter 
 was settled. I abandoned my last five- 
 dollar ditch, thinking that the relief of see- 
 ing the last of Poppy would be cheap at 
 the price. There were four of us, and 
 we would not hesitate to pay two dollars 
 each for theatre tickets, which would be 
 eight dollars, so really I was saving money. 
 
 A nice little girl with flaxen pigtails 
 brought her father's check. She and her 
 brother tied Poppy behind their buggy and 
 slowly disappeared down the hill. There 
 was the flutter of a handkerchief from the 
 other side of the canyon, and that was all. 
 
 In the words of that disturbing tele- 
 gram: 
 
 "Salve atque vale." 
 
 134] 
 
"Venite agile, batch etta mia 
 Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia ! " 
 
 accompanied by the enchanting fragrance 
 of burning sage-brush, is wafted up to my 
 sleeping-porch, and I know that Signor 
 Constantino Garibaldi is early at work 
 clearing the canyon side so that our Ma- 
 tilija poppies shall not be crowded out by 
 the wild. It is a pleasant awakening to a 
 [35] 
 
 \. 
 
THE SMILING HILIr-TOP 
 
 pleasant world as the light morning mist 
 melts away from a bay as "bright and 
 soft and bloomin' blue'' as any Kipling 
 ever saw. It seems almost too good to be 
 true, that in a perfect Italian setting we 
 should have stumbled on an Italian gar- 
 dener, who whistles Verdi as he works. 
 True, he doesn't know the flowers by 
 name, and in his hands a pair of clippers 
 are as fatal as the shears in the hands of 
 Atropos, but he is in the picture. When I 
 see gardeners pruning I realize that that 
 lady of destiny shows wonderful restraint 
 about our threads of fate — the temptation 
 to snip seems so irresistible. 
 
 Signor Garibaldi is a retired wine mer- 
 chant driven out-of-doors by illness, a 
 most courteous and sensitive soul, with a 
 talent for letter-writing that is alone worth 
 all the plumbago blossoms that he cut 
 
 [36] 
 
GARDENERS 
 
 away last year. The following letter was 
 
 written to J while Garibaldi was in 
 
 charge of our hill-top, the bareness of 
 which we strove to cover with wild flowers 
 until we could make just the kind of gar- 
 den we wanted : 
 
 March 15. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 The last time I had the pleasure of see you in 
 your place, Villa Collina Ridente, you exclaimed 
 with a melancholic voice, "Only poppies and 
 mignonette came out of the wild flower seeds." 
 " So it is," said I in the same tune of voice. Time 
 proved we was both wrong; many other flowers 
 made their retarded appearance, so deserving the 
 name of wild flower garden. . . . 
 
 Your place (pardon me as I am not a violet) 
 could look better, also could look worse; conse- 
 quently I consider myself entitled to be placed be- 
 tween hell and paradise — to have things as one 
 wishes is an insolvable problem — that era has not 
 come yet. 
 
 Many people come over to the Smiling hills, some 
 think it is not necessary to go any farther to collect 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 flower to make a bouquet. With forced gentle man- 
 ner I reproached some of them, ordering to observe 
 the rule, "vedere e non toccare.'* It go in force 
 while I am present, not so in my absence. Those 
 that made proverbs, their names ought to be im- 
 mortal. Here for one, "When the cat is gone, the 
 rats dance." How much true is in the Say. Every 
 visitor like the place profane or not profane in artis- 
 tic matter. 
 
 A glorious rain came last night to the great con- 
 tent of the farmers and gardeners — others not so. 
 While I am writing from my Observatorio I can't 
 see any indication of stopping. I don't think it will 
 rain as much as when we had the universal deluge, 
 but if the cause of said deluge was in order to get a 
 better generation, it may. I don't think the actual 
 generation is better than it was the anti-deluge, 
 pardon me if you can't digest what I say. I am a 
 pessimist to the superlative grade, and it is not 
 without reason that I say so. I had sad experience 
 with the World. Thank God for having doted me 
 with a generous dose of philosophic! Swimming 
 against the tide, not me, not such a fool I am ! 
 
 Here is another pardon that I have to ask and it 
 is to take the liberty of decorate the Smiling hill 
 with the American flag. La Bandiera Stellata 
 (note: I am not an American legally, no; to say I 
 
 [38] 
 
GARDENERS 
 
 renounce to my country, impossible, but I am an 
 American by heart if U. Sam can use me. I was not 
 trained to be a soldier, but in matter of shooting 
 very seldom I fail to get a rabbit when I want it, 
 more so lately that a box of shells from 60 cents 
 jumped to $1.00). As a rule the ridents colline are 
 very monotonous, but when I am home, more so the 
 Sunday, the "Marseillaise" no where is heard more 
 than here; no animosity against nobody; Cosmopoli- 
 tan, ardent admirer of C. Paine ! The world is my 
 country; to do good is my religion ! 
 
 With fervent wishes of not having need of doc- 
 tors or lawyers; with best regards to you and family. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 Constantino Garibaldi. 
 
 Unquestionably he has humor. After 
 receiving more or less mixed orders from 
 me, I have heard him softly singing in the 
 courtyard, "Donna e mobile." I only re- 
 gret that as a family we aren't musical 
 enough to assist with the "Sextette" from 
 "Lucia!" 
 
 Ever since we came to CaHfornia we 
 
 [39] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 have been lucky about gardeners. I don't 
 mean as horticulturists, but from the far 
 more important standard of picturesque- 
 ness. Of course no one could equal Gari- 
 baldi with the romance of a distant rela- 
 tionship to the patriot and the grand man- 
 ner no rake or hoe could efface, but Bank- 
 sleigh had his own interest. He was an 
 Englishman with pale blue eyes that al- 
 ways seemed to be looking beyond our 
 horizon into space. There was something 
 rather poetic and ethereal about him. 
 Perhaps he didn't eat enough, or it may 
 have been the effect of **New Thought," in 
 one of the fifty-seven varieties of which 
 he was a firm believer. He told me that 
 his astral colors were red and blue, and 
 that a phrenologist had told him that a 
 bump on the back of his head indicated 
 that he ought never to buy mining stock. 
 
 [40] 
 
GARDENERS 
 
 With the same instinct that undid Blue- 
 beard's and Lot's wives he had tried it, 
 and is once more back at his job of gar- 
 dening with an increased respect for 
 phrenology. 
 
 I have a grudge against phrenologists 
 myself. I had a relative who went to one 
 when he was a young man, and was told 
 that he had a wonderful baritone voice that 
 he ought to cultivate. Up to that time 
 he had only played the flute, but after- 
 wards he sang every evening through a 
 long life. 
 
 It distressed Banksleigh to see me lying 
 about in hammocks on the verandah. He 
 usually managed to give the vines in my 
 neighborhood extra attention — like Gari- 
 baldi, he was a confirmed pruner. He 
 told me that he wished I would take 
 up New Thought, and was sure that if I 
 [41] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 thought strong Vd be strong. I wonder ? 
 One summer, lying in bed in a hospital 
 where the heat was terrific, I found myself 
 repeating over and over: 
 
 "Sabrina fair, *> 
 
 Listen where thou art sitting, ' 
 Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave," 
 
 and finding it far more cooHng than iced 
 orange juice. Was not I proving Bank- 
 sleigh's contention ? I was thinking cool 
 and I was cool. In his own case New 
 Thought seemed to work. He always 
 looked ready to give up forever, and yet 
 he never did. 
 
 California is full of people with queer 
 quirks and they aren't confined to garden- 
 ers. I haven't had a hair-dresser who 
 wasn't occult or psychic or something, 
 from the Colonial Dame with premonitions 
 to the last one, who had both inspirations 
 
 [42] 
 
GARDENERS 
 
 and vibrations, and my hair keeps right on 
 coming out. 
 
 I don't quite understand why gardeners 
 should be queer. They say that cooks in- 
 variably become affected in time by so 
 much bending over a hot stove, and that 
 is easy to understand, but bending over 
 nature ought to have quite the opposite 
 effect, but it doesn't always. The lady 
 gardener who laid out the garden that 
 finally replaced our wild-flower tangle, 
 proved that. She had a voice that would 
 be wonderful in a shipyard, a firmness and 
 determination that would be an asset to 
 Congress and a very kind heart, also much 
 taste and infinite knowledge of the prefer- 
 ences and peculiarites of California plants. 
 Her right-hand man, "Will," was also odd. 
 Unfortunately, his ideas were almost the 
 opposite of hers. Before they arrived at 
 
 [43] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 our gate sounds of altercation were only 
 too plain. She liked curves in the walks, 
 he preferred corners; she liked tangles, he 
 liked regular beds. What we liked seemed 
 to be going to cut very little figure. All 
 that was lacking was our architect friend, 
 who had made the sketches and offered 
 various suggestions of "amusing" things 
 we might do. He also is firm, though his 
 manner is mild, so the situation would have 
 been even more "amusing" for the family 
 on the side lines, hatf he been present. 
 Owing to the placing of the house, we are 
 doomed to have a lopsided garden what- 
 ever we do, but we want it to look way- 
 ward rather than eccentric. After a bat- 
 tle fought over nearly every inch of the 
 ground the lady was victorious, for Will 
 said to me as he watched her motor dis- 
 appear: "I might as well do what she 
 
 [44] 
 
GARDENERS 
 
 says or she'll make me do it over." In 
 
 this J and I heartily concurred, for 
 
 the simplest of arithmetical calculations 
 would show that it would otherwise prove 
 expensive. 
 
 Will had a worker whose unhappy lot it 
 was to dig up stumps, apply the pick to 
 the adobe parts of the soil, and generally 
 to toil in the sweat of his brow. As a 
 team they made some progress, and I 
 began to have some hope of enjoying what 
 I had always been led to believe was the 
 treat of one's life — making a garden. I 
 felt entirely care-free — the lady gardener 
 was the boss and there was only room for 
 one — directions were a drug on the mar- 
 ket. This state of affairs was short-lived. 
 Will failed to appear the third day out, 
 and the lady gardener^s pumping system 
 for her nurseries blew up or leaked or lay 
 [45] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 down on the job in some way, so that the 
 worker and I confronted each other, igno- 
 rant and unbossed. I will not dwell on 
 the week that followed. The lady gar- 
 dener gave almost vicious orders by tele- 
 phone and the worker did his best, but it 
 is not a handy way to direct a garden. 
 When the last rosebush is in, including 
 some that Will is gloomily certain will 
 never grow, I think I shall go away for a 
 rest to some place where there is only cac- 
 tus and sage and sand. 
 
 J arrived on the scene in time to 
 
 save the day, and the garden is very 
 lovely. Next year it will be worth going 
 a long way to see, for in this part of the 
 world planting things is like playing with 
 Japanese water flowers. A wall of gray 
 stucco gently curves along the canyon 
 side, while a high lattice on the other shows 
 [46] 
 
GARDENERS 
 
 dim outlines of the hills beyond. In the 
 wall are arches with gates so curved as to 
 leave circular openings, through which we 
 get glimpses of the sea. It makes me 
 think of King Arthur's castle at Tintagel. 
 In the lattice there is a wicket gate. 
 There is something very alluring about a 
 wicket gate — it connotes a Robin. Unfor- 
 tunately, my Robin can only appear from 
 Friday to Monday, but I'm not complain- 
 ing. Any one is fortunate who can count 
 on romance two days out of seven. At the 
 far end of the garden is a screen designed 
 to hide the peculiarites of the garage. 
 The central panel is concrete with a win- 
 dow with green balusters; below is a wall 
 fountain. The window suggests a half- 
 hidden sefiorita. It really conceals a high- 
 school boy who is driving the motor for me 
 in J 's absence, but that is immaterial. 
 
 [47] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 The fountain is set with sapphire-blue tiles 
 
 and the water trickles from the mouth of 
 
 the most amiable lion I ever saw. He was 
 
 carved from Boise stone by one '*Luigi" 
 
 from a sketch by our architect friend. He 
 
 has Albrecht Diirer curls — the lion I mean 
 
 — four on a side that look like sticks of 
 
 peppermint candy and we call him '*Boy- 
 
 sey." 
 
 The pool below him is a wonderful place 
 
 for boat sailing. It fairly bristles with the 
 
 masts of schooners and yachts, and the 
 
 guns of torpedo destroyers, and while the 
 
 architect and the grown-ups did not have 
 
 a naval base in mind when the sketch was 
 
 made, I do appreciate the feelings of my 
 
 sons. 
 
 "There's a fountain in our garden, 
 With the brightest bluest tiles 
 And the pleasantest stone lion 
 Who spits into it and smiles ! 
 
 [48] 
 
GARDENERS 
 
 It's shaded by papyrus 
 And reeds and grasses tall, 
 Just a little land-locked harbor 
 Beside the garden wall. 
 
 "They talked of water-lilies 
 And lotus pink and white — 
 We didn't dare to say a word 
 But we wished with all our might, 
 For how could we manoeuvre 
 The submarine we've got, 
 If they go and clutter up the place 
 With all that sort of rot. 
 
 " But mother said she thought perhaps 
 We'd wait another year, 
 'It's such a lovely place to play. 
 We ought to keep it clear.* 
 So there's nothing but a goldfish 
 Who has to be a Hun, 
 I don't suppose he likes it. 
 But gee, it's lots of fun !" 
 
 Some day we are going to have a sun 
 
 dial. J thought of a wonderful motto 
 
 in the best Latin, and now he can't remem- 
 
 [49] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 ber it, which is harrowing, because it 
 would be so stylish to have a perfectly 
 original one. It was something about not 
 wanting to miss the shady hours for the 
 sake of having all sunny ones. At any 
 rate, we are resolved not to have "I count 
 none but sunny hours." 
 
 There are all kinds of responsibilities in 
 life, and picking the right shade of paint 
 for a house you have to live in is a most 
 wearing one. Painting the trimming of 
 ours in connection with the garden was 
 very agitating. I had sample bits of board 
 painted and took them about town, trying 
 them next to houses I liked, and at last 
 decided on a wicked Spanish green that the 
 storms of winter are expected to mellow. 
 As I saw it being put on the house I felt 
 panic-stricken. For a nice fresh vegetable 
 or salad, yes, but for a house — never! 
 [so] 
 
GARDENERS 
 
 And yet it is a great success ! I don't know 
 whether it has "sunk in," as the painter 
 consoled me by predicting, or whether it is 
 that we are used to it; at any rate, every 
 one likes it so much that I have cheerfully 
 removed smears of it from the clothing of 
 all the family, including the puppies' tails. 
 As to ourselves in the role of gardeners 
 — there were not two greener greenhorns 
 when we first resolved to stay in California; 
 
 we still are, though I think I do J an 
 
 injustice in classing him with me. We can 
 make geraniums grow luxuriantly, but we 
 don't want to. I wish they would pass a 
 law in Southern California making the 
 growing of red geraniums a criminal of- 
 fense. So many people love to combine 
 them with bougainvilHa and other brilliant 
 pink or purple flowers, and the light is 
 hard enough on eyes without adding that 
 [SI] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 horror. We are resolved to progress from 
 the geranium age to the hardy perennial 
 class, and are industriously studying books 
 and magazines with that end in view. 
 The worst of garden literature is that it is 
 nearly all written for an Eastern climate. 
 Once I subscribed for a garden magazine, 
 lured by a bargain three months' offer. 
 Never again! At the end of the time, 
 when no regular subscription came in 
 from me, letters began to arrive. Finally 
 one saying, "You probably think this is 
 another letter urging you to subscribe. It 
 is not; it is only to beg that you will con- 
 fidentially tell us why you do not." I 
 told him that all our conditions here are 
 so different from those in the East. Peo- 
 ple want Italian and Spanish gardens, and 
 there is the most marvellous choice of 
 flowers, shrubs, and vines with which to 
 
 [52] 
 
GARDENERS 
 
 get them, but we want to be told how, 
 and added to this, it is heart-breaking to 
 love a fountain nymph in the advertise- 
 ments and to find that her travelHng ex- 
 penses would bankrupt you. 
 
 One marvellous opportunity we have — 
 the San Diego Exposition, whose gardens 
 are more lovely than ever, though soldiers 
 and sailors are feeding the pigeons in the 
 Plaza de Panama instead of tourists. The 
 real intention of that exposition was to 
 show people in this part of the world what 
 they could do with the great variety of 
 plants and shrubs that thrive here. 
 
 I used to wonder why so little has been 
 written about gardeners when there are 
 shelves and shelves of volumes on gardens. 
 There are no famous gardeners in litera- 
 ture that occur to me at the moment ex- 
 cept Tagore's, and the three terrified ones 
 [S3] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 in Alice* s Adventures in Wonderland^ who 
 were hurriedly painting the white roses 
 red. I should love to read the diary of the 
 one who trimmed the borders while Boc- 
 caccio's gay company were occupying that 
 garden; or to hear what the head gardener 
 of the d'Este's could tell us, but I know 
 now why it is so. With the best of inten- 
 tions I haven't been able to avoid the pit- 
 fall myself. 
 
 54 
 
THERE may be a more smiling hill- 
 top than "La Collina Ridente" 
 somewhere on the Southern California edge 
 of the Pacific Ocean, but deep down in my 
 heart I don't believe that there is. It is 
 just the right size hill-top — except when I 
 first began to drive the motor, and then it 
 seemed a trifle small for turning around. 
 It's just high enough above the coast high- 
 way and the town to give us seclusion, and 
 it's just far enough from the waves to be 
 peaceful. It used to be, Called "Suma 
 Paz" — perfect peace — but we changed the 
 name, that being so unpleasantly sugges- 
 
 [ssl 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 tive of angels, and, anyway, there isn't 
 such a thing. If "The Smiling Hill-Top'* 
 were everything it seems on a blue and 
 green day like to-day, for instance, it would 
 be a menace to my character. I should 
 never leave, I should exist beautifully, 
 leading the life of a cauliflower or bit of 
 seaweed floating in one of the pools in the 
 rocks, or to be even more tropically poetic, 
 a lovely lotus flower ! I should not bother 
 about the children's education or grieve 
 
 over J 's bachelor state of undarned 
 
 socks and promiscuous meals, or the vari- 
 ous responsibilities I left behind in town, 
 so it is fortunate that there are thorns. 
 Every garden, from Eden down, has pro- 
 duced them. 
 
 I haven't catalogued mine, I have just 
 put them down *' higgledy-piggledy," as 
 we used to say when we were children. 
 
 [56] 
 
THORNS 
 
 J 's having to work in town, too far to 
 
 come home except for an occasional week- 
 end, the neighbors' dogs, servants, Ber- 
 muda grass, tenants, ants, the eccentrici- 
 ties of an adobe road during the rains, and 
 the lapses of the delivery system of the vil- 
 lage. Of course they are of varying de- 
 grees of unpleasantness. J 's absence 
 
 is horrid but the common lot, so I have 
 accepted it and am learning "to possess, in 
 loneliness, the joy of all the earth." Truth 
 compels me to add that it isn't always 
 loneliness, either, as, for example, one 
 week-end that was much cheered by a 
 visit from our architect friend, who rode 
 down from Santa Barbara in his motor, 
 and made himself very popular with every 
 member of the household. He brought 
 home the laundry, bearded the ice man in 
 his lair, making ice-cream possible for Sun- 
 [57] 
 
THE SMILING HILIr-TOP 
 
 day dinner, mended the garden lattice, 
 and drew entrancing pictures of galleons 
 sailing in from fairy shores with all their 
 canvas spread, for the boys. As we waved 
 our handkerchiefs to him from the Good- 
 by Gate on Monday, Joedy turned to me : 
 
 "I wish he didn't have to go !" A little 
 pause. 
 
 **Muvs, if you weren't married to 
 Father, how would you like — " but here I 
 interrupted by calling his attention to a 
 rabbit in the canyon. 
 
 One thing I do not consider a part of 
 the joy of all the earth — the neighbors' 
 dogs. On the next hill-top is an Airedale 
 with a voice like a fog-horn. He is an un- 
 gainly creature and thoroughly disillu- 
 sioned, because his family keep him locked 
 up in a wire-screened tennis-court, where 
 he barks all day and nearly all night. He 
 
 [58] 
 
THORNS 
 
 can watch the motors on the coast road 
 from one corner of his cage, and that 
 seems to drive him almost wild. He ought 
 to realize how much better ofF he is than 
 the Lady of Shalott, who only dared to 
 watch the highway to Camelot in a mirror ! 
 Sometimes he has a bad attack of lamen- 
 tation in the night — he is quite Jeremiah's 
 peer at that — and then we all call his house 
 on the telephone. You can see the lights 
 flash on in the various cottages and hear 
 the tinkle of the bell, as we each in turn 
 voice our indignation. Once I even saw a 
 white-robed figure in the road across the 
 canyon, and heard a voice borne on the 
 night wind, " For heaven's sake, shut that 
 dog up." We all bore it with Christian 
 resignation when his family decided to 
 take a motor camping trip, Prince to be 
 included in the party. He is probably 
 [59] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 even now waking the echoes on Lake 
 Tahoe, or barking himself hoarse at the 
 Bridal Veil Falls in the Yosemite, but 
 thank goodness we can't hear him quite 
 as far away as that. 
 
 I dare say that he might be a perfectly 
 nice, desirable dog if he had had any early 
 training. Our own "pufflers," as the boys 
 call "Rags" and "Tags," their twin silver- 
 haired Yorkshire terriers, could tell him 
 what a restraining influence the force of 
 early training has on them, even on moon- 
 light nights. 
 
 Prince is the worst affliction we have 
 had, but not the only one. The people on 
 the mountain-slope above us acquired a 
 yellowish collie-like dog to scare away 
 coyotes. He ought to have been a success 
 at it, though I don't know just what it 
 takes to scare a coyote. At any rate, he 
 
 [60] 
 
THORNS 
 
 used to bark long and grievously about 
 dawn in the road across the canyon. One 
 morning I was almost frantic with the 
 irregularity of his outbursts. It was like 
 waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sud- 
 denly a rifle shot rang out; a spurt of yel- 
 low dust, a streak of yellow dog, and 
 
 silence ! I rushed to J *s room, to find 
 
 him with the weapon, still smoking, in his 
 hands. I begged him not to start a neigh- 
 borhood feud, even if we never slept after 
 dawn.. I even wept. He laughed at me. 
 **I didn't shoot at him," he said. "I shot 
 a foot behind him, and Fve given him a 
 rare fright!" He had, indeed. The ter- 
 ror of the coyotes never came near us 
 again. 
 
 As to servants, the subject is so rich 
 that I can only choose. Unfortunately, 
 the glory of the view does not make up to 
 [6il 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 them for the lack of town bustle and 
 nightly *' movies/* so it isn't always easy 
 to make comfortable summer arrange- 
 ments. As you start so you go on, for 
 changing horses in mid-stream has ever 
 been a parlous business. A temperamental 
 high-school boy who came to drive the 
 motor and water the garden, though he 
 appeared barefooted to drive me to town, 
 and took French leave for a day's fishing, 
 pinning a note to the kitchen door, saying, 
 "Expect me when you see me and don't 
 wait dinner," afflicted me one entire sum- 
 mer. I tried to rouse his ambition by 
 pointing out the capitalists who began by 
 digging ditches — California is full of them 
 — and assuring him that there were no 
 heights to which he might not rise by pa- 
 tient application, etc. It was no use. He 
 watered the garden when I watched him; 
 
 [62] 
 
THORNS 
 
 otherwise not. I came to the final conclu- 
 sion that he was in love. Love is responsi- 
 ble for so much. 
 
 Another summer I decided to try darkies 
 and carefully selected two of contrasting 
 shades of brown. The cook was a slim 
 little quadroon, with flashing white teeth 
 and hair arranged in curious small dough- 
 nuts all over her head. She was a grass 
 widow with quite an assortment of chil- 
 dren, though she looked little more than a 
 child herself. "Grandma" was taking 
 care of them while the worthless husband 
 was supposed to be running an elevator in 
 New Orleans. Essie had quite lost inter- 
 est in him, I gathered, for I brought her 
 letters and candy from another swain, who 
 used such thin paper that I couldn't avoid 
 seeing the salutation, *'0h, you chicken!'* 
 
 Mandy was quite different. She was a 
 
 [63] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 rich seal brown, large and determined, and 
 had left a husband on his honor, in town. 
 We had hardly washed off the dust of our 
 long motor-ride before trouble began. A 
 telegram for Mandy conveyed the dis- 
 quieting news that George had been ar- 
 rested on a charge of assault at the request 
 of "grandma." It appeared that after 
 seeing wifey off for the seashore he felt the 
 joy of bachelor freedom so strongly that 
 he dropped in to see Essie's mother, who 
 gave him a glass of sub rosa port, which 
 so warmed his heart that he tried to em- 
 brace her. Grandma was only thirty-four 
 and would have been pretty except for 
 gaps in the front ranks of her teeth. She 
 had spirit as well as spirits, and had him 
 clapped into jail. Telegrams came in — do 
 you say droves, covies, or flocks ? Night 
 letters especially, and long-distance tele- 
 
 [64] 
 
THORNS 
 
 phone calls — all collect. The neighbors, 
 the Masons, the lawyer, and various 
 relatives all went into minute detail. 
 Grandma, being the injured party, pru- 
 dently confined herself to the mail. As 
 we have only one servant's room and that 
 directly under my sleeping-porch, it made 
 it very pleasant! The choicest telegram 
 
 J took down late one night. It was 
 
 from one of Mandy's neighbors, and ended 
 with the illuminating statement: "George 
 never had a gun or a knife on him; he was 
 soused at the time!" Mandy emerged 
 from bed, clad in a red kimono and a pink 
 boudoir cap, to receive this comforting 
 message. She wept; Essie, who had fol- 
 lowed in order to miss nothing, scowled, 
 
 while J and I wound our bath-robes 
 
 tightly about us and gritted our teeth, in 
 
 an effort to preserve a proper solemnity. 
 
 [6s] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 Of course we had to let her go back to the 
 trial, which she did with the dignity of 
 one engaged in affairs of state. She and 
 the judge had a kind of mother's meeting 
 about George, and decided that a touch of 
 the law might be just the steadying influ- 
 ence he needed. 
 
 The sentence was for three months, 
 which suited me exactly, as I calculated 
 that his release and our return to town 
 would happily synchronize. Mandy really 
 stood the gaff pretty well and returned to 
 her job, and an armed neutrality ensued, 
 varied by mild outbreaks. Essie was 
 afraid of Mandy. She said that she would 
 never stay in the house with her alone; 
 Mandy wouldn't stay in the house alone 
 after dark, so it became rather compli- 
 cated. We apparently had to take them 
 or else find them weeping on the hillside, 
 [66] 
 
THORNS 
 
 when we came back from a picnic. In jus- 
 tice to the darky heart I must say that 
 when Billie was taken very ill they buried 
 the hatchet for the time, and helped us all 
 to pull him through. 
 
 The summer was almost over when I 
 began to suffer from a strange hallucina- 
 tion. I kept seeing a colored gentleman 
 slipping around corners when I approached. 
 As Mandy was usually near said corner, I 
 certainly thought of George, but calmed 
 myself with the reflection that he was safe 
 in jail. Not so. George had experienced 
 a change of heart and had behaved in so 
 exemplary a manner that his sentence had 
 been shortened two weeks, and what more 
 natural than that he should join his wife ? 
 It wasn't that I was afraid of George; I 
 was afraid for George. I did not want 
 him to meet Essie, for if Grandma's smile 
 
 [67] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^-TOP 
 
 had cost him so dearly, I hated to think of 
 the effect of Essie's black eyes and un- 
 broken set of white teeth. I needn't have 
 worried, for George was apparently "sick 
 of lies and women," and never let go his 
 hold on the apron-string to which he was 
 in duty bound. 
 
 This summer I am unusually fortunate, 
 owing to a moment of clear vision that I 
 had forty-eight hours before leaving town. 
 I had a Christian Science cook, a real artist 
 if given unlimited materials, and she didn't 
 mind loneliness, as she said that God is 
 everywhere; to which I heartily agreed. I 
 know that He is on this hill-top. So far so 
 good, but her idea of obeying Mr. Hoover's 
 precepts was not to mention that any 
 staple was out until the last moment. At 
 about six o'clock she usually came pussy- 
 footing to my door in the tennis shoes she 
 [68] 
 
THORNS 
 
 always wore, to tell me that there wasn't 
 a potato in the house, or any butter. Not 
 so bad in Pasadena, with a man to send to 
 the store, but very trying on a smiling hill- 
 top, one mile from town, with me the only 
 thing dimly suggestive of a chauffeur on 
 the place. At 3 a. m. I resolved to bounce 
 her, heavenly disposition and all. I did, 
 and engaged a cateress for what I should 
 call a comfortable salary, rather than 
 wages. She can get up a very appetizing 
 meal from sawdust and candle-ends, when 
 necessary, and that is certainly what is 
 needed nowadays. Also, she has launched 
 a wonderful counter-offensive against the 
 ants. There was a time when we ate our 
 meals surrounded by a magic circle like 
 Brunhilde, but ours was not of flames, but 
 of ant powder. Not that they mind it 
 much. Fm told that they rather dislike 
 [69] 
 
THE SMILING HILD-TOP 
 
 camphor, but do you know the present 
 price of that old friend ? 
 
 There are singularly few pests or blights 
 in the garden itself. Bermuda or devil 
 grass is one of our Western specialties, 
 though it may have invaded the East, too, 
 since we left. It is an unusually husky 
 plant, rooting itself afresh at every joint 
 with new vigor, and quite choking out the 
 aristocratic blue grass with which we 
 started our lawn. At first you don't notice 
 it as it sneaks along the ground, some time 
 above and some time below, as it feels dis- 
 posed, and then suddenly you see its cob- 
 webby outlines as plainly as the concealed 
 animals in a newspaper puzzle. If you 
 begin to pull it out you can't stop. It re- 
 minds me of the German system of espio- 
 nage, and that adds zest to my weeding. 
 The other day I laboriously uprooted an 
 
 [70] 
 
THORNS 
 
 intricate network of tentacles, all leading 
 to one big root, which I am sure must have 
 been Wilhelmstrasse itself. Being able to 
 do so little to help win the war, this is a 
 valuable imaginative outlet to me ! 
 
 Everything about the place, as well as 
 the lawn, seems to get out of order when 
 we have tenants. No one Hkes tenants 
 any more than we like ''Central." There 
 is a prejudice against them. They do the 
 things they ought not to do and leave un- 
 done the things they ought to do, and 
 there is no health in them. I have more 
 often been one than had one, and I hate to 
 think of the language that was probably 
 used about us, though we meant well. 
 
 I am not going to tell all I know about 
 tenants after all. I have changed my 
 mind. I am also going to draw a veil over 
 the adobe road during the rains, because 
 
 [71] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 ■ '' .... — 
 
 we really do like to rent the place to help 
 pay for the children's and the motor's 
 shoes, and it wouldn't be good business. 
 
 The village delivery system enrages and 
 entertains me by turns. I was frankly 
 told by the leading grocery store that they 
 did not expect to deliver to people who 
 had their own motors, and when I occa- 
 sionally insist on a few necessities being 
 sent up to my house, they arrive after dark 
 conveyed by an ancient horse, as the gro- 
 cery manager is conservative. A horse 
 doesn't get a puncture or break a vital part 
 often (if he does, you bury him and get 
 another) and it is about a toss-up between 
 hay and gasoline. 
 
 Every now and then I am marooned on 
 
 my hill, if the motor is "hors de combat," 
 
 and then I get my neighbor to let me join 
 
 her in her morning marketing trip, some- 
 
 [72] 
 
THORNS 
 
 times with disastrous results. One day the 
 boys and I sat down to dinner with fine 
 sea-air appetites, to be confronted by a 
 small, crushed-looking fish. I sent out to 
 ask the cook for more. She said there was 
 no more, and as no miracle was wrought 
 in our behalf, we filled up the void with 
 mashed potatoes as best we could. Just 
 as the plates were being removed the tele- 
 phone rang, and my neighbor's agitated 
 voice asked if I had her cat's dinner I 
 Light flooded in on my understanding. 
 We had just eaten her cat's dinner. She 
 went on to say that the fish-man had 
 picked out a little barracuda (our house- 
 hold fish in California) from his scraps and 
 made her a present of it. I faintly asked 
 if she thought it was a very old one, visions 
 of ptomaine poisoning rising vividly. Oh, 
 no, she said, "it wasn't old at all, he had 
 
 [73] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 merely stepped on it." My own perfectly 
 good dinner was at her house. I told her 
 to take off a portion for her cat, and I 
 would send the boys for the rest. I heaved 
 a sigh of relief — a fresh young fish, even if 
 crushed, would not have fatal results. 
 
 I will pass rapidly on to my last thorn, 
 which isn*t on the list because Fm not 
 quite sure that it is one. It is a small, 
 second-hand, rather vicious little motor, 
 which I have learned to drive as a war 
 measure. After the first time I ever tried 
 to turn it around, and it flew at our lovely 
 rose-garlanded lattice fence at one hun- 
 dred miles an hour, I christened it "the 
 little fury." I missed the fence by revolv- 
 ing the steering wheel as though I were 
 playing roulette. I almost went round 
 
 twice, but J rescued me by kicking my 
 
 foot ofF the throttle. Since then I have 
 sufficiently mastered it to drive to town 
 
 [74] 
 
THORNS 
 
 for the laundry and the newspaper. I am 
 Hke a child learning to walk by having an 
 orange rolled in front of it. I must know 
 how far the Allies have driven the Ger- 
 mans, so I set my teeth and start for town 
 in the "little fury." Every one told me 
 that Fd have to break something before I 
 really got the upper hand. I have. I 
 bravely drove out to a Japanese truck gar- 
 den for vegetables and came to grief. One 
 of the boys tersely expressed it in his 
 diary, "Muvs ran into a Japanese barn 
 and rooked the bumper !" Now that that 
 is over, I begin to feel a certain sense of 
 independence that is not unpleasant. It 
 is some time since I have stalled the engine 
 or tried to climb a hill with the emergency 
 brake set. The boys and the "pufflers'' 
 are game and keep me company; we live 
 or die together. 
 
 After all, the loveliest rose in my garden, 
 [75] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 the Sunburst, lifts its fragrant flower of 
 creamy orange on a stalk bristling with 
 wicked-looking mahogany spikes. If Vm 
 very careful about cutting it, I don't prick 
 my fingers and the thorns really add to 
 the effect. 
 
 [76] 
 
ra I &f¥$^ TKAIL 
 
 A FRIEND of mine once wrote an arti- 
 cle on motoring in Southern Cali- 
 fornia for one of the smart Eastern maga- 
 zines. In it she said that often a motor 
 would be followed by a trailer loaded with 
 a camp outfit. What was her surprise 
 and amusement to read her own article 
 later, dressed for company, so to speak. 
 
 1 77] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 *'A trailer goes ahead with the servants 
 and outfit, so that when the motoring 
 party arrives on the scene all is in readi- 
 ness for their comfort." Great care must 
 be taken that the sensibilities of the elect 
 should not be offended by the horrid 
 thought that ladies and gentlemen actually 
 do make their own camp at times ! So the 
 trailer has to go ahead, and that is just 
 where the lure and magic of Southern 
 California slips through the fingers. 
 
 Most of us have a few drops, at least, of 
 gypsy blood in us, and in this land of sun- 
 shine and the open road we all become 
 vagabonds as far as our conventional up- 
 bringing will let us. When you know that 
 it won't rain from May to October, and 
 the country is full of the most lovely and 
 picturesque spots, how can you help at 
 least picnicking whenever you can .? 
 
 [ 78 ] 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL 
 
 Trains are becoming as obsolete in our 
 family as the horse. We wish to take a 
 trip: out purrs the motor; in goes the 
 family lunch-box, a thermos bottle, and 
 a motor-case of indispensables, and we are 
 off. No fuss about missing the train, no 
 baggage, no tickets, no cinders — just the 
 open road. 
 
 I had heard that every one deteriorated 
 in Southern CaHfornia, and after the first 
 year I began earnestly searching my soul 
 for signs of slackening. Perhaps my soul 
 is naturally easy-going, for somehow I 
 can't feel that the things we let slip matter 
 so greatly. 
 
 This much I will admit. There is no 
 deadher drug habit than fresh air! The 
 first summer on our Smiling Hill-Top kind 
 ladies used to ask me to tea-parties and 
 card-parties, but I could never come in- 
 
 [79] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 doors long enough to be anything but a 
 trial to my partners at bridge, so now I 
 don't even make believe Fm a polite mem- 
 ber of society. Of course, there are people 
 who carry it further than I do, and can*t 
 be quite happy except in their bathing- 
 suits. Fm not as bad as that. I can still 
 enjoy the sea breezes and the colors and 
 the sound of the waves with my clothes 
 on. I don't even wear my bathing-suit to 
 market, which is one of the customs of the 
 place. It is a picturesque little village; 
 half the houses are mere shacks, a kind of 
 compromise between dwelling and bath- 
 houses, everyone being much too thrifty 
 to pay money to the Casino when they 
 can drip freely on their own sitting-room 
 floor, without the least damage to the fur- 
 nishings. Life for many consists largely 
 of a prolonged bath and bask on the beach, 
 
 [80] 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL 
 
 with dinner at a cafeteria and a cold bite 
 for supper at home or on the rocks. It is 
 surely an easy life and yet a great deal of 
 earnest effort and strenuous thinking goes 
 on, too, women's clubs, even an "open 
 forum," and there are many delightful 
 people who live there all the year for the 
 sake of the perfect climate. Also, there 
 are a few charming houses perched on the 
 cliffs, most suggestive of Sorrento and 
 Amalfi. An incident J is fond of tell- 
 ing gives the combined interests of the 
 place. He was on his way to the post- 
 office when he met two women in very 
 scanty jersey bathing-suits with legs bare, 
 wearing, to be sure, law-fulfilling mackin- 
 toshes, but which, being unbuttoned, 
 flapped so in the breeze that they were 
 only a technical covering. The ladies 
 were in earnest conversation as he passed. 
 [81] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 J heard one say, "I grant all you say 
 
 about the charm of his style, but I con- 
 sider his writing very superficial!" 
 
 It is a wonderful life for small boys. 
 My sons are the loveliest shades of brown 
 with cheeks of red, and in faded khaki and 
 bare legs are as good an example of pro- 
 tective coloring on the hillside as any zebra 
 in a jungle. Quite naturally they view 
 September and the long stockings of the 
 city with dislike. 
 
 There is a place on the beach by the 
 coast road between Pasadena and San 
 Diego where we always have lunch on our 
 journeys to and from town. Just after you 
 leave the picturesque ruins of the Capis- 
 trano Mission in its sheltered valley, you 
 come out suddenly on the ocean, and the 
 road runs by the sand for miles. With a 
 salt breeze blowing in your face you can't 
 resist the lunch box long. With a stuffed 
 [82I 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL 
 
 egg in one hand and a sandwich in the 
 other, Joedy, aged eight, observed on our 
 last trip south, "This is the bright side of 
 living." I agree with him. 
 
 One late afternoon a friend of ours was 
 driving alone and offered a lift to two 
 young men who were swinging along on 
 foot. "Your price.?" they asked. "A 
 smile and a song," was the reply. So in 
 they got, and those last fifty miles were 
 gay. That is the sort of thing which fits 
 so perfectly into the atmosphere of this 
 land. Perhaps it is the orange blossoms, 
 perhaps it is that we have extra-sized 
 moons, perhaps it is the old Spanish charm 
 still lingering. All I know is that it is a 
 
 land of glamour and romance. J said 
 
 he was going to import a pair of nightin- 
 gales. I said that if he did he*d have a 
 lot to answer for. 
 
 Places are as different as people. The 
 
 [83] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 East, and by that I mean the country east 
 of the Alleghanies and not Iowa and Kan- 
 sas, which are sometimes so described out 
 here, has reached years of discretion and 
 is set in its way. CaHfornia has tempera- 
 ment, and it is still very young and enthu- 
 siastic and is having a lot of fun "growing 
 up/* I love the stone walls, huckleberry 
 pies, and johnny cakes of Rhode Island, 
 and I love the associations of my childhood 
 and my family tree, but there is something 
 in the air of this part of the world that 
 enchants me. It is a certain "Why not ?" 
 that leads me into all sorts of delight- 
 ful experiences. Conventionality does not 
 hold us as tightly as it does in the East, 
 and a certain tempting feeling of unlim- 
 ited possibiHties in life makes waking up 
 in the morning a small adventure in itself. 
 It isn't necessary to point out the dangers 
 of an unlimited "Why not?" cult — they 
 
 [84] 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL 
 
 are too obvious. "Why not?" is a ques- 
 tion that one's imagination asks, and 
 imagination is one of the best spurs to 
 action. I will give an example of what I 
 mean : When war was declared J sug- 
 gested putting contribution boxes with red 
 crosses on the collars of "Rags" and 
 "Tags," the boys' twin Yorkshire ter- 
 riers, and coaxing them to sit up on the 
 back of the motor. I never had begged on 
 a street corner, but I thought at once, 
 "Why not ?" The result was much money 
 for the Red Cross, an increased knowledge 
 of human nature for me, as well as some 
 dehghtful new friends. I should never 
 have had the courage to try it in New York 
 — let us say; I should have been afraid I'd 
 be arrested. 
 
 At first to an Easterner the summer 
 landscape seems dry and dusty, but after 
 living here one grows to love the peculiar 
 [8s] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 soft tones of tan and bisque, with bright 
 shades of ice plant for color, and by the 
 sea the wonderful blues and greens of the 
 water. No one can do justice to the glory 
 of that. Sky-blue, sea-blue, the shimmer 
 of peacocks' tails and the calm of that blue 
 Italian painters use for the robes of their 
 madonnas, ever blend and ever change. 
 Trees there are few, the graceful silhouette 
 of a eucalyptus against a golden sky, oc- 
 casional clumps of live oaks, and on the 
 coast road to San Diego the Torry pines, 
 relics of a bygone age, growing but one 
 other place in the world, and more pic- 
 turesque than any tree I ever saw. One 
 swaying over a canyon is the photograph- 
 er's joy. It has been posing for hundreds 
 of years and will still for centuries more, I 
 have no doubt. 
 
 Were I trying to write a sort of sugar- 
 [86] 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL 
 
 coated guide-book, I could make the 
 reader's mouth water, just as the menu of 
 a Parisian restaurant does. The canyons 
 through which we have wandered, the hills 
 we have circled, Grossmont — that island 
 in the air — Point Loma, the southern tip 
 of the United States, now, alas, closed on 
 account of the war (Fort Rosecrans is near 
 its point), and further north the mountains 
 and orange groves — snow-capped Sierras 
 looming above orchards of blooming 
 peach-trees ! 
 
 Even the names add to the fascination, 
 the Cuyamaca Mountains meaning the 
 hills of the brave one; Sierra Madre, the 
 mother mountains; even Tia Juana is 
 euphonious, if you don't stop to translate 
 it into the plebeian "Aunt Jane," and no 
 names could be as lovely as the places 
 themselves. So much beauty rather goes 
 
 [87] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 to one's head. For years in the East we 
 had lived in rented houses, ugly rented 
 houses, always near the station, so that 
 
 J could catch the 7.59 or the 8.17, on 
 
 foot. To find ourselves on a smiling hill- 
 top — our own hill-top, with "magic case- 
 ments opening on the foam" — seemed like 
 a dream. After three years it still seems 
 too good to be true. 
 
 They say that if you spend a year in 
 Southern California you will never be able 
 to leave it. I don't know. We haven't 
 tried. The only possible reason for going 
 back would be that you aren't in the stir- 
 ring heart of things here as you are in New 
 York, and the Times is five days old when 
 you get it. Your friends — they all come 
 to you if you just wait a little. What 
 amazes them always is to find that South- 
 ern California has the most perfect summer 
 [88] 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL 
 
 climate in the world, if you keep near the 
 sea. No rain — many are the umbrellas I 
 have gently extracted from the reluctant 
 hands of doubting visitors; no heat such as 
 we know it in the East. We have an out- 
 of-door dining-room, and it is only two or 
 three times in summer that it is warm 
 enough to have our meals there. In the 
 cities or the "back country" it is different. 
 I have felt heat in Pasadena that made me 
 feel in the same class with Shadrach, Me- 
 shach and Abednego, but never by the sea. 
 One result of all this fresh air is that we 
 won*t even go indoors to be amused. 
 Hence the outdoor theatre. Why go to a 
 play when it's so lovely outside ? But to 
 go to a play out-of-doors in an enchanting 
 Greek theatre with a real moon rising 
 above it — that's another matter. I shall 
 never forget "Midsummer Night's Dream " 
 
 [89] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 as given by the . Theosophical Society 
 at Point Loma. Strolling through the 
 grounds with the mauve and amber domes 
 of their temples dimly lighted I found my- 
 self murmuring: "In Xanadu did Kubla 
 Khan a stately pleasure dome decree." In 
 a canyon by the sea we found a theatre. 
 The setting was perfect and the perform- 
 ance was worthy of it. Never have I seen 
 that play so beautifully given, so artisti- 
 cally set and delightfully acted, though the 
 parts were taken by students in the Theo- 
 sophical School. After the last adorable 
 Httle fairy had toddled off — I hope to bed 
 — we heard a youth behind us observe, 
 "These nuts sure can give a play." We 
 echoed his sentiments. 
 
 I should make one exception to my 
 statement that people won't go indoors to 
 be amused. They go to the "movies" — 
 [90] 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL 
 
 I think they would risk their lives to see a 
 new film almost as recklessly as the actors 
 who make them. The most interesting 
 part of the moving-picture business is out- 
 of-doors, however. You are walking down 
 the street and notice an excitement ahead. 
 Douglas Fairbanks is doing a little tight- 
 rope walking on the telegraph wires. A 
 little farther on a large crowd indicates 
 further thrills. Presently there is a splash 
 and Charley Chaplin has disappeared into 
 a fountain with two policemen in pursuit. 
 Once while we were motoring we came to 
 a disused railway spur, and were surprised 
 to find a large and fussy engine getting up 
 steam while a crowd blocked the road for 
 some distance. A lady in pink satin was 
 chained to the rails — placed there by the 
 villain, who was smoking cigarettes in the 
 offing, waiting for his next cue. The lady 
 
 [91] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 in pink satin had made a little dugout for 
 herself under the track, and as the loco- 
 motive thundered up she was to slip under- 
 neath — a job that the mines of Golconda 
 would not have tempted me to try. Mov- 
 ing-picture actors have a very high order 
 of courage. We could not stay for the 
 denouement, as we had a nervous old lady 
 with us, who firmly declined to witness any 
 such hair-raising spectacle. I looked in 
 the paper next morning for railway acci- 
 dents to pink ladies, but could find nothing, 
 so she probably pulled it off successfully. 
 Every year new theatres are built. We 
 have seen Ruth St. Denis at the Organ 
 Pavilion of the San Diego Exposition, and 
 Julius Caesar with an all-star cast in the 
 hills back of Hollywood, where the space 
 was unlimited, and Caesar's triumph in- 
 cluded elephants and other beasts, loaned 
 
 [92] 
 
THE GYPSY TRAIL 
 
 by the "movies," and Brutus' camp 
 spread over the hillside as it might actually 
 have done long ago. There is a place in 
 the back country near Escondido, where 
 at the time of the harvest moon an Indian 
 play with music is given every year. At 
 Easter thousands of people go up Mount 
 Rubidoux, near Riverside, for the sunrise 
 service. Some celebrated singer usually 
 takes part and it is very lovely — quite un- 
 like anything else. 
 
 So we have come to belong to what the 
 French would call the school of "pleine 
 air." I once knew an adorable little boy 
 who expressed it better than I can: 
 
 "Sun callin* me, sky callin* me, 
 Comin* sun — comin* sky." 
 
 [93 
 
ML ADVEipiil llt^QilTllDl 
 
 MY windows were all wide open one 
 lovely April day, the loveliest time 
 of all the year in Southern California, fill- 
 ing the house with the sweetness of wistaria 
 and orange blossoms, but also, truth com- 
 pels me to add, with so many noises of such 
 excruciating kinds that I followed Ulysses' 
 well-known plan and then tried to find 
 quiet for my siesta in the back spare-room. 
 The worst of this house is that it really has 
 no back — it has various fronts, like the 
 war. The spinster next door but one has 
 a parrot — a cynical, tired parrot, but still 
 fond of the sound of his own voice. The 
 
 [94] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 lady across the street is raising Pekinese 
 puppies, who apparently bitterly regret 
 being born outside of Pekin. She puts 
 them in baskets on the roof in the sun and 
 lets them cry it out, in that hard-hearted 
 modern method appHed to babies. 
 
 A sight-seeing car had paused while the 
 gentleman with the megaphone explained 
 to a few late tourists the Arroyo Seco, that 
 great river-bed with only a trickle of water 
 at the bottom, on whose brink our house 
 perches. At home two plumbers were 
 playfully tossing bricks about our court- 
 yard in a half-hearted endeavor to find out 
 why our cellar was flooded. Hence the 
 back bedroom. No amount of cotton 
 wool in one's ears, however, could camou- 
 flage a telephone bell. 
 
 "The Red Cross Executive Committee 
 will meet at ten on Wednesday." 
 [9S] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 A short interval followed. "Will Mr. 
 
 S make a * four-minute' speech on 
 
 Friday at the Strand Theatre for the 
 Liberty Bond Campaign?" 
 
 Another interval during which I began 
 
 to feel drowsy. "Will Mr. S say a 
 
 few words of appreciation and present a 
 wrist watch to the Chapter Secretary just 
 starting for France ? " etc. Just here I 
 made a resolve. Escape I would, for one 
 week, to my lovely hill-top by the sea, and 
 
 leave J , the two boys, the two dogs, 
 
 the two white mice, the Red Cross, the 
 Red Star, Food Conservation and Liberty 
 Bonds to manage beautifully without me. 
 I even had the reckless idea of trying to 
 forget that there was a war going on ! I 
 was furnished with a perfectly good ex- 
 cuse; we had rented "The Smiling Hill- 
 Top " for two months, and it must be put 
 
 [96] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 in order. Hence my "Adventure in Soli- 
 tude." 
 
 Everything is called an adventure now- 
 adays, and to me it was a most exciting one, 
 as I had not gone forth independently for 
 many years. One chauffeur, one smiling 
 Helen to clean house for the tenants and 
 cook for me, my worst clothes and my best 
 picnic lunch went into the motor, and I 
 followed. I think my family expected me 
 back next day, when I bade them a loving 
 farewell. Not 1 1 My spirit was craving 
 silence. I wanted not to curl my hair or 
 be neat or polite or a good mother, or any 
 of the things I usually try to be, for just 
 one week. Longer, and I would be lonely 
 and homesick. 
 
 It was a lovely day. The coast road to 
 San Diego runs through orange groves for 
 miles, and the perfume of the blossoms 
 
 [97] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 hung about us till we came to the sea, 
 where a salt breeze blew away the heavy 
 sweetness. I lunched on the sand and 
 watched the waves for an hour. There, at 
 least, are endless re-enforcements ! As fast 
 as the front ranks break more come always 
 to fill their places. 
 
 I felt no hurry, as the Smiling Hill-Top 
 is some fifteen miles nearer Pasadena than 
 San Diego — an easy day's run — and I had 
 no engagements, but at last my impatience 
 to see how much our garden had grown 
 started me once more on my way, and we 
 arrived at our wicket gate in the late after- 
 noon. There were twenty-seven keys on 
 the ring the real-estate agent gave me — 
 twenty more than caused so much trouble 
 at Baldpate — but none fitted, so I had the 
 chauffeur lift the gate bodily from its 
 hinges and I was at home ! 
 
 [98] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 In California things grow riotously. 
 Grandparents who haven't seen their 
 grandsons for years, and find that they 
 have shot up from toddhng babies to tall 
 youths, must feel as I did when I saw the 
 vines and shrubs, especially the banana 
 trees planted only six months before! 
 The lawn over which I had positively wept 
 lay innocent and green — almost English in 
 its freshness. The patio was entrancing 
 with blooming vines. The streptasolen, 
 which has no "Httle name," as the French 
 say, was like a cascade of flame over one 
 end of the wall. The place was ablaze 
 with it. The three goldfish in the foun- 
 tain seemed as calm as ever, and apparently 
 have solved the present problem of the high 
 cost of living, for they don't have to be 
 fed at all. The three had picked up what 
 they needed without human aid. I really 
 
 [99] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 felt like patting them on the head, but 
 that being out of the question, I was 
 moved to rhyme: 
 
 "I wish I were a goldfish, 
 All In a little bowl; 
 I wouldn't worry whether 
 I really had a soul. 
 
 I'd glide about through sun and shade 
 And snatch up little gnats, 
 My heaven would be summer 
 My hell — ^well, call it cats I" 
 
 All this time the chauffeur had been 
 wrestling with the key ring, and finally 
 had our bare necessities in the way of doors 
 open. I had telegraphed our agent that I 
 was coming only long enough before for 
 the house to have what is vulgarly known 
 as "a Hck and a promise," but it looked 
 just as comfortable and pleasant as I knew 
 that it would, and the terrace — no need to 
 [loo] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 bother about that. The south wind does 
 the housework there. 
 
 That night I went to sleep between 
 sheets fragrant with lavender from my own 
 garden, while the ocean boomed gently on 
 the beach below the hill. In the week that 
 followed I abolished a number of things. 
 First of all, meal hours. I had my meals 
 when I felt like it; in fact, I didn't wind the 
 clock till I was leaving. I only did it then 
 on account of the tenants, as some people 
 find the ticking of a clock and the chirping 
 of a cricket pleasant and cosy sounds. I 
 don't. Then I cut out the usual items 
 from my bill of fare, and lived on young 
 peas, asparagus, eggs, milk, and fruit, with 
 just a little bread and butter — not enough 
 to agitate Mr. Hoover. I never had had 
 as much asparagus as I really wanted be- 
 fore. I wore an old smock and a disrepu- 
 [lOl] 
 
c, c c t , 
 
 titE SMILING HILD-TOP 
 
 table hat, and I pruned and dug in my gar- 
 den till I was tired, and then I lay on the 
 terrace and watched the waves endlessly 
 gather and gHde and spread. Counting 
 sheep jumping over a wall is nothing to 
 compare with waves for soothing rasped 
 nerves. 
 
 My first solitary day was so clear that 
 the Pasadena Mountains, as we call that 
 part of the Sierra Madre, rose soft over the 
 water on the far horizon, so that I couldn't 
 feel lonely with home in sight. Long un- 
 used muscles expostulated with me, but 
 smoothed-out nerves more than balanced 
 their twinges. Of course I couldn't forget 
 the war. Who could, especially with 
 flocks of aeroplanes flying over me as I lay 
 on a chaise longue on the terrace, listening 
 to the big guns of Camp Kearny roaring 
 behind the hills; but it no longer gave me 
 [102] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 the sensation of sand-paper in my feelings. 
 I thought about it all more calmly and 
 realized a little of what it is doing to us 
 Americans — to our souls — that is worth the 
 price; and in addition, how much it is 
 teaching us of economy, conservation, and 
 efficiency, as well as more spiritual things. 
 
 It has also brought home to me the 
 beauty of throwing away. In a fever of 
 enthusiasm to make every outgrown union 
 suit and superfluous berry spoon tell, I 
 have ransacked my house from garret to 
 cellar, and I bless the Belgians, Servians, 
 and Armenians, the Poles and the French 
 orphans for ridding me of a suffocating 
 mass of things that I didn't use, and yet 
 felt obliged to keep. 
 
 My wardrobe is now the irreducible 
 minimum, the French Relief has the rest, 
 and at last I have more than enough hang- 
 [ 103 ] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 ers in my closet to support my frocks. 
 The shoes that pinched but looked so smart 
 that they kept tempting me into one more 
 trial have gone to the Red Cross Shop. 
 No more concerts will be ruined by them. 
 The hat that made me look ten years older 
 than I like .to think I do, accompanied 
 them. It was a good hat, almost new, and 
 it cost — more than I pay for hats now- 
 adays. I do not need to wear it out. My 
 large silver tea-pot given me by my maid 
 of honor did good work for the Belgians — 
 I hope if she ever finds out about its fate 
 that she will be glad that it is now warm 
 stockings for many thin little Belgian legs. 
 Nora, from Ireland, viewed its departure 
 with satisfaction — it made one less thing 
 to polish. Many odds and ends of silver 
 followed, and were put into the melting- 
 pot, being too homely to survive — I'm sav- 
 [104] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 ing enough for heirlooms for my grand- 
 children, of course. One must not allow 
 sentiment to go by the board; we need it 
 especially now that we have lost such 
 quantities of it out of the world. So much 
 was "made in Germany," that old Ger- 
 many of the fairy tales and Christmas 
 trees which seems to be gone forever. 
 
 I need not go on enumerating my activi- 
 ties. Every one has been doing the same 
 thing, and in all probability is now enjoy- 
 ing the same sense of orderliness and free- 
 dom that I feel. Even the children have 
 caught the spirit. I was just leaving my 
 house the other day when a palatial auto- 
 mobile stopped at the gate and a very 
 perfect chauffeur alighted and touched his 
 cap. "Madam," he said, "I have come 
 for a case of empty bottles that Master 
 John says your little boy promised him for 
 [los] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 the Red Cross." There was a trace of 
 embarrassment in his manner, but there 
 was none in mine as I led him to the cellar 
 and watched with satisfaction while he 
 clasped a cobwebby box of — dare I whisper 
 it ? — empty beer bottles to his immaculate 
 chest and eventually stowed it in the ex- 
 quisite interior of the limousine. How 
 wonderful of the Red Cross to want my 
 bottles, and how intelligent of my "little 
 boy" to arrange the matter so pleasantly ! 
 To do away with the needless accumula- 
 tions of life, or better still, not to let them 
 accumulate, what a comfort that would 
 be ! Letters ? The fire as rapidly as pos- 
 sible ! No one ought to have a good time 
 reading over old letters — there's always a 
 tinge of sadness about them, and it's mor- 
 bid to conserve sadness, added to which, 
 in the remote contingency of one's becom- 
 [io6] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 ing famous, some vandalish relative always 
 publishes the ones that are most sacred. 
 
 J has the pigeon-hole habit. He 
 
 hates to see anything sink into the abyss 
 of the waste-basket, but I am training him 
 to throw away something every morning 
 before breakfast. After a while he'll get 
 so that he can dispose of several things at 
 once, and the time may come when I'll 
 have to look over the rubbish to be sure 
 that nothing valuable has gone, because 
 throwing away is just as insidious a habit 
 as any other. 
 
 If only one could pile old bills on top of 
 the old letters, what a glorious bonfire 
 that would make ! But that will have to 
 wait until the millennium; as things are 
 now, it would mean paying twice for the 
 motor fender of last year, and never feeling 
 sure of your relations with the butcher. 
 
 [107] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 It isn't only things that I am disposing 
 of. IVe rid myself of a lot of useless ideas. 
 We don't have to live in any special way. 
 It isn't necessary to have meat twice a 
 day, and there is no law about chicken for 
 Sunday dinner. Butter does not come 
 like the air we breathe. Numerous courses 
 aren't necessary even for guests. New 
 clothes aren't essential unless your old ones 
 are worn out — and so on. 
 
 And so I'm stepping forth on a road 
 leading, even the graybeards can't say 
 where, with surprises behind every hedge 
 and round every corner. There hasn't 
 been so thrillingly interesting an age to be 
 alive since that remote time when the 
 Creation was going on. Except for mo- 
 ments of tired Serves, like this, it is very 
 stimulating, and I find myself stepping out 
 much more briskly since I threw my extra 
 [ io8 ] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 wraps and bundles beside the road. Here 
 on my hill-top I have even enjoyed a little 
 of that charm of unencumberedness that 
 all vagabonds know — and later if I come to 
 some steep stretches I shall be more likely 
 to make the top, for Fm resolved to 
 "travel light." 
 
 There is usually one serpent in Eden, if 
 it is only a garter snake. Ours was a frog 
 in the fountain. He had a volume of sound 
 equal to Edouard de Reske in his prime. I 
 set the chauffeur the task of catching him, 
 but after emptying out all the water one 
 little half-inch frog skipped off, and John 
 assured me that he could never be the 
 offender. But he was "Edouard'* in spite 
 of appearances, for he returned at dusk and 
 took up the refrain just where he had left 
 off. I decided to hunt him myself. It 
 was like the game of "magic music" that 
 [109] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 we used to play as children: loud and you 
 are "warm"; soft and you are far away. 
 I never caught him. He was ready to 
 greet the tenants instead of the cosy 
 cricket, and may have been the reason 
 why they suddenly departed after only a 
 three weeks' stay, but as it was a foggy 
 May, as it sometimes is on this coast, that 
 
 is an open question. J tersely put it, 
 
 "Frog or fog?" 
 
 The smiling Helen smiled more beam- 
 ingly every day, but the chauffeur hated 
 it. He was a city product and looked as 
 much at home on that hill-top as a dancing- 
 master in a hay-field. He smoked cigar- 
 ettes and read the sporting page of the 
 paper in the garage, where gasoline rather 
 deadened the country smells of flowers and 
 hay, and tried to forget his degrading sur- 
 roundings, but he was overjoyed when the 
 [no] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 day to start for home arrived. I did not 
 share his feelings, and yet I was ready to 
 go. It had been a great success, and the 
 only time I had felt lonely was in a crowded 
 
 restaurant in San Diego, where J and 
 
 I had had many jolly times in past sum- 
 mers. On the Smiling Hill-Top who could 
 be lonely with the ever-changing sea and 
 sky and sunsets. I dare not describe the 
 picture, as I don't wish to be put down as 
 mad or a cubist. Scent of the honeysuckle, 
 the flutter of the breeze, the song of pink- 
 breasted linnets and their tiny splashings 
 in the birds' pool outside my sleeping- 
 porch, the velvet of the sky at night, with 
 its stars and the motor lights on the high- 
 way like more stars below — how I love it 
 all ! I was taking enough of it home with 
 me, I hoped, to last through some strenu- 
 ous weeks in Pasadena, until I could 
 
 [III] 
 
THE SMILING HILIr-TOP 
 
 come back for the summer, bringing my 
 family. 
 
 Much bustling about on the part of the 
 smiling Helen and me, much locking of 
 gates and doors by the bored chauffeur, 
 and we were off for home ! After all is said 
 and done, "home is where the heart is," 
 irrespective of the view. 
 
 The first part of the way we made good 
 time, but just out of one of the small sea- 
 side towns something vital snapped in the 
 motor's insides. It happened on a bridge 
 at the foot of a hill, and we were very lucky 
 to escape an accident. I will say for the 
 chauffeur that while, as a farmer, he would 
 never get far, as a driver he knew his busi- 
 ness. One slight skid and we stopped 
 short, "never to go again," like grand- 
 father's clock. It resulted in our having 
 to be towed backwards to the nearest ga- 
 
 [112] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 rage, while the chauffeur jumped on a 
 passing motor bound for Pasadena, and 
 was snatched from my sight like EHjah in 
 the chariot — he was off to get a new driv- 
 ing shaft. The smiHng Helen followed in 
 a Ford full of old ladies. I elected to 
 travel by train and sat for hours in a small 
 station waiting for the so-called "express." 
 In a hasty division of the lunch I got all 
 the hard-boiled eggs, and of course one 
 can eat only a limited number of them, 
 though I will say that a few quite deaden 
 one's appetite. 
 
 I had an amazing collection of bags, 
 coats, and packages, and was dreading em- 
 barking on the train. However, I have a 
 private motto, "There is a way." There 
 was. The only occupant of the waiting- 
 room besides myself was a very dapper 
 gentleman of what I should call lively mid- 
 [113] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 die age, with very upstanding gray mus- 
 taches. I took him to be a marooned mo- 
 torist, also. He was well-dressed, with the 
 added touch of an orange blossom in his 
 button-hole, and he had a slightly roving 
 eye. His hand-baggage was most "re- 
 fined." I had noticed him looking my way 
 at intervals, and wondered if he craved a 
 hard-boiled egg; I could easily have spared 
 him one ! While I am certainly not in the 
 habit of seeking conversation with strange 
 gentlemen, there are always exceptions to 
 everything, and I concluded that this was 
 one. I smiled ! We chatted on the subject 
 of the flora and fauna of CaHfornia in a per- 
 fectly blameless way till my train whistled, 
 when he said, "I am going to carry those 
 bags for you, if you will allow me!" I 
 thanked him aloud and inwardly remarked, 
 "I have known that for a long time!" 
 ["4] 
 
AN ADVENTURE IN SOLITUDE 
 
 What made it especially pleasant was 
 that I was going north and he was going 
 south. So ended my Adventure — not all 
 Solitude, if you Hke, but as near it as one 
 can achieve with comfort. The amazing 
 thing about it was how well I got on with 
 myself, for I don't think Fm particularly 
 
 easy to live with. I must ask J . 
 
 Probably it was the novelty. 
 
 [115] 
 
^^^isiii FAMa^ 
 
 I ONCE remarked that I thought New 
 York City a most friendly and neigh- 
 borly place, and was greeted with howls of 
 derision. I suppose I said it because that 
 morning a dear old lady in an oculist's of- 
 fice had patted me, saying, "My dear, it 
 would be a'pity to put glasses on you," and 
 an imposing blonde in a smart Fifth Ave- 
 nue shop had sold me a hat that I couldn't 
 afford either to miss or to buy, for half 
 price, because she said I'd talked to her 
 like a human being, the year before — all of 
 which had warmed my heart. I think 
 perhaps my statement was too sweeping. 
 [ii6] 
 
A SABINE FARM 
 
 Since we have changed oceans I notice that 
 the atmosphere of the West has altered 
 my old standards somewhat. There is an 
 easy-going fellowship all through every 
 part of life on this side of the Rocky 
 Mountains. 
 
 Take banks, for instance. Can you pic- 
 ture a dignified New York Trust Company 
 with bowls of wild flowers placed about the 
 desks and a general air of hospitality ? In 
 one bank I have often had a pleasant half- 
 hour very like an afternoon tea, where all 
 the officers, from the president down, came 
 to shake hands and ask after the children. 
 Of course, that is a rather unusually pleas- 
 ant and friendly bank, even for CaHfornia. 
 Always I am carefully, tenderly almost, 
 escorted to my motor. At first this flat- 
 tered me greatly, till I discovered that 
 there is a law in California that if you slip 
 [117] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 and hurt yourself on any one's premises, 
 they pay the doctor's bill. Hence the so- 
 licitude. I was not to be allowed to strain 
 my ankle, even if I wanted to. 
 
 Probably the same geniaHty existed in 
 the East fifty years ago. I have been told 
 that it did. It is a very delightful stage of 
 civilization where people's shells are still 
 soft, if they have shells at all. There is an 
 accessibility, a breeziness and camaraderie 
 about even the prominent men — the bul- 
 warks of business and pubHc Hfe. We are 
 accused of bragging and "boosting" in the 
 West. I am afraid it is true. They are 
 the least pleasant attributes of adolescence. 
 
 Banking isn't the only genial profession. 
 There is real estate. Of course about half 
 the men in California are in real estate for 
 reasons too obvious to mention. Provi- 
 dence was kind in putting us into the hands 
 [ii8] 
 
A SABINE FARM 
 
 of an honest man, better still, one with 
 imagination, when we came to look for a 
 winter bungalow. He saw that we had to 
 have something with charm, even if the 
 furniture was scarce, and took as much 
 pains over realizing our dream as if we had 
 been hunting for a palace. It was he who 
 found our "Sabine Farm," which brought 
 us three of the best gifts of the gods — 
 health, happiness, and a friend. We had 
 almost decided to take a picturesque cot 
 that I named "The Jungle," from its tan- 
 gle of trees and flowers, even though the 
 cook could reach her abode only by an 
 outside staircase. The boys had volun- 
 teered to hqld an umbrella over her during 
 the rainy season, but I wasn't quite satis- 
 fied with this arrangement. Just then we 
 saw an enchanting bungalow set in a gar- 
 den of bamboos, roses and bananas, and 
 
 [119] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 looked no further! It belonged to an 
 English woman who raised Toggenburg 
 goats, which made it all the more desirable 
 for us as the goats were to stay at the 
 back of the garden, and provide not only 
 milk but interest for the boys. 
 
 J dubbed it *'E1 rancho goato" at 
 
 once. Our friends in the East were de- 
 lighted with the idea, and many were their 
 gibes. One in particular always added 
 something to the address of his letters for 
 the guide or diversion of the R. F. D. 
 postman: "Route 2, Box so-and-so, you 
 can tell the place by the goats"; or during 
 the spring floods this appeared in one cor- 
 ner of the envelope: "Were the goats above 
 high water?" 
 
 It wasn't just an ordinary farm. There 
 was a certain something — I think the 
 names of the goats had a lot to do with it 
 [120] 
 
A SABINE FARM 
 
 — Corella, Coila, Babette, Elfa, Viva, Lo- 
 rine, and so on, or perhaps it was the devo- 
 tion of their mistress, who expended the 
 love and care of a very large heart on a 
 family that I think appreciated it as far as 
 goats are capable of appreciation. If she 
 was a little late coming home (she had a 
 tiny shack on one corner of the place) they 
 would be waiting at the gate calling plain- 
 tively. There is a plaintive tone about 
 everything a goat has to say. In his cot 
 
 on the porch J composed some verses 
 
 one morning early — I forget them except 
 for two lines : 
 
 "The plaintive note of a querulous goat 
 Over my senses seems to float." 
 
 Of course that was the difficulty — crea- 
 tures of one kind or another do not lie 
 abed late. Our Sabine Farm was sur- 
 rounded by others and there was a neigh- 
 
 [121] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 borhood hymn to the dawn that it took 
 us some time to really enjoy — if we ever 
 did. Sopranos — roosters; altos — pigeons, 
 and ducks; tenors — goats; bassos — cows, 
 and one donkey. There was nothing miss- 
 ing to make a full, rich volume of sound. 
 Of course there is no place where it is so 
 difficult to get a long, refreshing night's 
 sleep as the country. 
 
 One rarely comes through any new ex- 
 perience with all one's preconceived ideas 
 intact. Our first season on the Sabine 
 Farm shattered a number of mine. I had 
 always supposed that a mocking-bird, like 
 a garden, was "a lovesome thing, God 
 wot." Romantic — ^just one step below a 
 nightingale ! 
 
 There was a thicket of bamboos dose to 
 my window, and every night all the young 
 mocking-birds gathered there to try out 
 [122] 
 
A SABINE FARM 
 
 their voices. It was partly elocutionary 
 and partly vocal, but almost entirely exer- 
 cises — rarely did they favor me with a real 
 song. This would go on for some time, 
 then just as I dared to hope that lessons 
 were over, another burst of ill-assorted 
 trills and shrills would rouse me to fury. 
 I kept three pairs of boots in a convenient 
 place, and hurled them into the bamboos, 
 paying the boys a small reward for retriev- 
 ing them each morning. Sometimes, if my 
 aim was good, a kind of wondering silence 
 lasted long enough for me to fall asleep. 
 There is an old song — ^we all know it — that 
 runs: 
 
 "She's sleeping in the valley, etc., etc.. 
 And the mocking-bird is singing where she lies." 
 
 That, of course, would be impossible if 
 the poor little thing hadn't been dead. 
 By day I really enjoyed them. To sit 
 [123] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 in the garden, which smelled Hke a per- 
 petual wedding, reading Lafcadio Hearn 
 and listening to mocking-birds and linnets, 
 would have undermined my New England 
 upbringing very quickly, had I had time 
 to indulge often in such a lotus-eating 
 existence. 
 
 Then there was "Boost." He was a 
 small bantam rooster, beloved of our land- 
 lady, which really proves nothing because 
 she was such a tender-hearted person that 
 she loved every dumb creature that wan- 
 dered to her door. Had Boost been dumb 
 I might have loved him too. He had a 
 voice like the noise a small boy can make 
 with a tin can and a resined string. He 
 had a malevolent eye and knew that I de- 
 tested him, so that he took especial pains 
 to crow under my windows, generally about 
 an hour after the mocking-birds stopped. 
 [124] 
 
A SABINE FARM 
 
 I think living with a lot of big hens and 
 roosters told on his nervous system, and 
 he took it out on me. Great self-restraint 
 did I exercise in not wringing his neck, 
 when help came from an unexpected quar- 
 ter. Boost had spirit — I grant him that 
 — and one day he evidently forgot that he 
 wasn't a full-sized bird, and was reproved 
 by the Sultan of the poultry-yard in such 
 a way that he was found almost dead of 
 
 his wounds. Dear Miss W 's heart 
 
 was quite broken. She fed him brandy 
 and anointed him with healing lotions, 
 but to no avail. He died. I had felt 
 much torn and rather doublefaced in my 
 inquiries for the sufferer, because I was so 
 terribly afraid he might get well, so it was 
 a great relief when he was safely buried in 
 the back lot. 
 
 Though I love animals I have had blood- 
 
 [125] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 thirsty moments of feeling that the only- 
 possible way to enjoy pets was to have 
 them like those wooden Japanese eggs 
 which fit into each other. If you have 
 white mice or a canary, have a cat to con- 
 tain the canary, and a dog to reckon with 
 the cat. Further up in the scale the mat- 
 ter is more difficult, of course. One of our 
 *'best seller" manufacturers, in his early 
 original days, wrote a delightful tale. In 
 it he said: "A Cheetah is a yellow streak 
 full of people's pet dogs," so perhaps that 
 is the answer. The ultimate cheetah 
 would, of course, have to be shot and 
 stuffed, as it would hardly be possible to 
 have a wild-cat lounging about the place. 
 I think the idea has possibilities. So many 
 of our plans are determined by pets. **No, 
 we can't close the house and go motoring 
 for a week, because there is no one with 
 
 [ 126 ] 
 
A SABINE FARM 
 
 whom to leave the puppies." "Yes, we 
 
 rented our house to Mrs. S for less 
 
 than we expected to get for it, because she 
 is so fond of cats and promised to take good 
 care of Pom Pom'* — ^which recalls to my 
 mind a dear little girl who had a white 
 kitten that she was entrusting to a neigh- 
 bor. The neighbor, a busy person with 
 eight children, received the kitten without 
 demonstration of any kind. Little Lydia 
 looked at her for a few moments and then 
 
 said, "Mrs. F , that kitten must be 
 
 loved." That is really the trouble, not 
 only must they be loved, but they are loved 
 and then the pull on your heart-strings 
 begins. We have a pair of twin silver- 
 haired Yorkshire terriers, who are an inti- 
 mate part of our family circle. I some- 
 times feel like a friend of mine in San Fran- 
 cisco, who has a marvellous Chinese cook, 
 [127] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 and says she hopes she will die before Li 
 does. I hope " Rags " and "Tags " will live 
 as long as I do — and yet they are a perfect 
 pest. If they are outdoors they want to 
 come in, or vice versa. It is practically 
 impossible to sneak off in the motor with- 
 out their escort and they bark at my best 
 callers. Since they made substantial sums 
 of money begging for the Red Cross, they 
 have added a taste for publicity to their 
 other insistent qualities and come into the 
 drawing-room, and sit up in front of who- 
 ever may be calling, with a view to sugar 
 and petting. And the worst of it is I can't 
 maintain discipline at all. Rags has had 
 to be anointed with a salve compounded 
 of tar and sulphur. It is an indignity and 
 quite crushes his spirit, so that after it has 
 been put on he wishes to sit close to me 
 for comfort. The result is that I become 
 [ 128 ] 
 
A SABINE FARM 
 
 like a winter overcoat just emerging from 
 moth-balls rather than hurt his feelings. 
 Ofcourse it makes some difference whether 
 the pet that is annoying you belongs to 
 you or a neighbor. I doubt whether I 
 could have loved Boost, however, even if 
 I had known him from the shell. 
 
 In spite of these various drawbacks we 
 led a most happy life. It was so easy. 
 The bungalow was so attractively fur- 
 nished; our own oranges and limes grew at 
 the door. There was just room for us 
 with nothing to spare, that had to be kept 
 in order, and our landlady was as different 
 from the cold-hearted ones we had known 
 as the bankers and real-estate men. She 
 seemed to be always trying to think of 
 what we might need, and to provide it. 
 
 Dear Miss W , 'she will never be a good 
 
 business woman from the world's point of 
 [ 129 ] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 view; she is too generous and too unsel- 
 fish ! We all loved her. Many were the 
 hours I inveigled her into wasting while 
 we sat on bales of the goats' hay and dis- 
 cussed Hfe and the affairs of the country 
 — but mostly life with its curious twists 
 and turns — its generosities and its stingi- 
 nesses. The boys spent their time in the 
 goat-pen making friends of the little kids, 
 whose various advents added so much in- 
 terest to the spring, and learning much 
 
 from Miss W , whose attitude towards 
 
 life was so sane and wholesome for them 
 to know. 
 
 "Buckaboo," the only buck on the ranch 
 when we came, was a dashing young crea- 
 ture, prancing about and kicking up his 
 heels for the pure joy of living. Joedy in- 
 formed J that he reminded him of him, 
 
 ''only in a goat way, father" — a tribute 
 [130] 
 
A SABINE FARM 
 
 to the light-heartedness that California 
 had already brought to at least one mem- 
 ber of the family. 
 
 If our Sabine Farm's vocation was goats, 
 its avocation was surely roses. We were 
 literally smothered in them. A Cecil 
 Brunner with its perfect little buds, so 
 heavily perfumed, covered one corner of 
 the house. The Lady Bankshire, with its 
 deHcate yellow blossoms, roofed our porch, 
 and the glorious Gold of Ophir, so thorny 
 and with little fragrance, concealed our 
 laundry from the road. There was a gar- 
 den of bush roses of all kinds to cut for the 
 house, and the crowning glory of all was a 
 hedge of "Tausend Schon," growing lux- 
 uriantly, and a blaze of bloom in May. 
 After years of illness and worry, it was 
 good to feel Hfe coming back joyously in 
 a kind of haven — or heaven — of roses. 
 
 [131] 
 
HE mm &^mMWX 
 
 WHEN Alice stepped through the 
 looking-glass and ran out into that 
 most alluring garden, she must have felt 
 much as I did long ago when I stepped off 
 the Santa Fe Limited and found myself in 
 Southern California for the first time ! It 
 isn't just the palm trees and the sunshine, 
 though they are part of the charm. It 
 isn't even the mocking-birds and the 
 orange blossoms altogether. It is some- 
 thing you can't really put your finger on, 
 that lures you from your old habits and 
 associations. At first you are simply glad 
 [132] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 that you have left the cold and snow be- 
 hind you, and that the earth is so sweet 
 with flowers, and then you begin to find a 
 new world of possibilities. There are all 
 sorts of Httle garden gates with golden 
 keys on glass tables, and you set about 
 growing shorter or taller, as the case may 
 be, to make yourself a proper height to 
 reach the key and sHp through the door. 
 You don't even need to hurry, if you are 
 firm about not grasping the hand of any 
 Red Queen that may come your way, and 
 yet it isn't a land of manana; it's a land 
 of "Why Not ?" The magic has nothing 
 to do with one's age; I feel it now even 
 more than I did twenty years ago, and 
 Grandmother felt it at eighty just as I 
 did at eighteen. Ulysses could have him- 
 self lashed to the mast and snap his fingers 
 at the Sirens, but I know of no protection 
 [133] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 against the Southwest except to somehow 
 close the shutters of your imagination. 
 However, let me not be a Calvinist; be- 
 cause it is enchanting, why should I fear it ? 
 I shall never forget my first experience 
 of the spell. I was invited by my Grand- 
 mother to go to California for several 
 months. There were four of us, and we 
 were all tired, for one reason or another; 
 Grandmother because she was eighty, and 
 it's a strenuous matter to live eighty years; 
 my Aunt because she had been desperately 
 ill; C. C. because she had nursed my Aunt 
 back to comparative health, and I because 
 I had been a debutante that winter, and 
 every one knows that that is the hardest 
 work of all. We went as far south as the 
 train would take us, and settled ourselves 
 at Coronado to bask in the sunshine until 
 the tiredness was gone and we became a 
 band of explorers, with the world before 
 
 [134] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 us ! A pair of buggies drawn by nags of 
 unblemished reputation for sagacity and 
 decorum, driven by C. C. and me, carried 
 us over many a picturesque and rough 
 road. It invariably took us all day to get 
 anywhere and back, irrespective of what 
 the distance was supposed to be. The out- 
 fit was so old that I often had to draw up 
 my steed and mend the harness with a 
 safety-pin. TraiHng Ramona was our fa- 
 vorite game. Fortunately for that part 
 of the country, she and Allessandro man- 
 aged to be born, or sleep, or marry, or die 
 in pretty nearly every little settlement, 
 ranch, or mission in San Diego County, 
 and it's a great boon to the country. Now, 
 of course, with a motor you can cover the 
 ground in a day, but then, with a guaran- 
 teed horse and a safety-pinned harness, 
 Ramona was good for weeks. 
 We usually took a picnic lunch, and it 
 li3S] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^-TOP 
 
 was on one of these trips that I first saw 
 the Smiling Hill-Top and knew it not for 
 my later love. How often that happens I 
 Jogging home, with the reins slack on the 
 placid mare's back, Grandmother liked me 
 to sing "Believe Me If All Those Endear- 
 ing Young Charms" and "Araby's Daugh- 
 ter," showing that she was a good deal 
 under the spell of the palm trees and the 
 sunset, for I have the voice of a lost kitten. 
 It also shows the perfect self-control of the 
 horse, for no accidents occurred. 
 
 It was a very different Coronado from 
 the present day, with its motors on earth 
 and water, and in air. I liked ours better 
 and hated to leave it, but after six weeks 
 of its glory of sunshine I was deputed to 
 go north to Pasadena to rent a bungalow 
 for two months. It was my first attempt 
 of the kind, and aided by a cousin into 
 
 1 136] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 whose care I had been confided, I suc- 
 ceeded in reducing the rent twenty-five 
 dollars a month for a pretty cottage smoth- 
 ered in roses and heliotropes and well 
 supplied with orange and lemon trees. I 
 was rather pleased with myself as a busi- 
 ness woman. Not so Grandmother. She 
 was thoroughly indignant and announced 
 her firm intention of paying the original 
 rent asked, a phenomenon that so sur- 
 prised our landlord, when I told him, that 
 he insisted on scrubbing the kitchen floor 
 personally, the day of her arrival. Thus 
 did Raleigh lay down his cloak for the 
 Queen ! 
 
 Everything was lovely. It only rained 
 once that spring — the morning after we 
 had gone up Mount Lowe to see the sun 
 rise, to be sure, but it would be a carping 
 creature who would complain when only 
 [137] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 one expedition had been dampened. For 
 twenty years I cherished the illusion that 
 this was a land of endless sunshine. I 
 don't know where I thought the moisture 
 came from that produces the almost tropi- 
 cal luxuriance of the gardens and the 
 groves. I know better now and, strange 
 to say, I have come to love a rain in its 
 proper time and place, if it isn't too bois- 
 terous. We discovered a veteran of the 
 Civil War turned liveryman, who for a 
 paltry consideration in cash was ours every 
 afternoon, and showed us something new 
 each day, from racing horses on the Lucky 
 Baldwin Ranch to the shadow of a spread 
 eagle on a rock. Grandmother's favorite 
 excursion was to a picturesque winery set 
 in vineyards and shaded by eucalyptus 
 trees. She was what I should call a wine- 
 jelly, plum-pudding prohibitionist, and she 
 
 [138] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 included tastes of port and fruit cordials 
 as part of the sight-seeing to be done. 
 You can be pretty at eighty, which is con- 
 soling to know. Grandmother, with a 
 little curl over each ear and the pink born 
 of these "tastes" proved it, and she 
 wouldn't let us tease her about it either. 
 It was an easy Hfe, and so fascinating that 
 I even said to myself, "Why not learn to 
 play the guitar?" for nothing seemed 
 impossible. It shows how thoroughly 
 drugged I was by this time, for my Creator 
 wholly omitted to supply me with a musi- 
 cal ear. I always had to have my instru- 
 ment tuned by the young man next door, 
 but I learned to play "My Old Kentucky 
 Home" so that every one recognized it. 
 Now, if years had not taught me some 
 fundamental facts about my limitations, I 
 should probably render twilight hideous 
 [139] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 with a ukelele, for a ukelele goes a guitar 
 one better, and Aloha oee wailed languor- 
 ously on that instrument would make even 
 a Quaker relax. 
 
 It was in the late spring that the Great 
 Idea came to Aunty and me. I don't know 
 which of us was really responsible for it, 
 and there was a time when neither of us 
 would own it. A course in small "Why 
 Nots r* made it come quite naturally at 
 the last. Why shouldn't we drive into the 
 Yosemite Valley before we went home ? 
 By the end of May it would be at its loveli- 
 est, with the melted snows from the moun- 
 tains filling its streams and making a 
 rushing, spraying glory of its falls. It did 
 seem a pity to be so near one of the loveli- 
 est places on earth and to miss seeing it. 
 Aunty and I discussed the matter dispas- 
 sionately under a palm tree in the back 
 [140] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 yard. We honestly concluded that it 
 wouldn't hurt Grandmother a bit, that it 
 might even do her good, so we began to 
 put out a few conversational feelers, and 
 the next thing we knew she was claiming 
 the idea as her own and inviting us to 
 accompany her ! In her early married life 
 she was once heard to say to Grandfather, 
 "Edwin, I have made up our minds." So 
 you can see that Aunty and I were as clay 
 in her hands ! Where we made our great 
 mistake was in writing to the rest of the 
 family about our plans until after we had 
 started. They became quite abusive in 
 their excitement. Were we crazy ? Had 
 we forgotten Grandmother's age? What 
 was C. C, a trained nurse, about, to let a 
 little delicate old lady take such a trip? 
 They were much shocked. We had to ad- 
 mit her age, but Aunty and I weren't so 
 
 [141] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 sure about her delicacy, and anyway her 
 mind was made up, so we burned their 
 telegrams and packed the bags. 
 
 It happened twenty years ago, but I can 
 see her sitting in a rocking-chair on the 
 piazza of Leidig's Hotel in Raymond, sur- 
 rounded by miners, all courteously editing 
 their conversation and chewing tobacco as 
 placidly as a herd of cows, while Grand- 
 mother, the only person whose feet were 
 not elevated to the railing, rocked gently 
 and smiled. Of course we planned to 
 make the trip as easy as possible, and had 
 engaged a spring wagon so that we could 
 take more time than the stage, which 
 naturally had to live up to a Bret Harte 
 standard. We made an early start from 
 Raymond after a rather troubled night at 
 Leidig's Hotel. You hear strange sounds 
 in a mining camp after dark. Every one 
 [ 142 ] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 in town saw us off, as Grandmother was 
 already popular, and looked on as rather a 
 sporting character. Al Stevens, who drove 
 us, was a bitter disappointment to me, not 
 looking in the least romantic or like the 
 hero of a Western story. I shan't even de- 
 scribe him, except to say that he smoked 
 most evil-smelling cigars, the bouquet of 
 which blew back into our faces and spoiled 
 the pure mountain air, but we didn't dare 
 say a word, for fear that he might lash his 
 horses round some hair-pin curve and scare 
 us to death, even if we didn't actually go 
 over the edge. I don't think he would 
 really have rushed to extremes, for he 
 turned out to be distinctly amiable, and 
 our picnic lunches, eaten near some moun- 
 tain spring, were partaken of most sociably 
 and Al Stevens didn't always smoke. How 
 good everything tasted ! I don't believe I 
 [143] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 have ever really enjoyed apple pie with a 
 fork as I enjoyed it sitting on a log with a 
 generous wedge in one hand and a hearty 
 morsel of mouse-trap cheese in the other. 
 We spent three days driving into the 
 valley, staying at delightful inns over 
 night, and stopping when we pleased, to 
 pick flowers, for wonderful ones grow be- 
 side the road; Mariposa tulips with their 
 spotted butterfly wings, fairy lanterns, all 
 the shades of blue lupin, and on our detour 
 to see the big trees I found a snow-plant, 
 which looks Hke a blossom carved out of 
 watermelon — pink and luscious ! It is 
 hard to realize how big the big trees are ! 
 Like St. Peter's, they are so wonderfully 
 'proportioned you can't appreciate their 
 height, but I do know that they would be 
 just a Httle more than my tree-climbing 
 sons would care to tackle. Stevens was a 
 [ 144 ] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 good driver and approved of our apprecia- 
 tion of "his" scenery, and I think he was 
 proud of Grandmother, who really stood 
 the trip wonderfully well. At last came 
 the great moment when a bend in the road 
 would disclose the valley with its silver 
 peaks, its golden-brown river, and its rain- 
 bow-spanned falls. We had never sus- 
 pected it, but Stevens was an epicure in 
 beauty. He insisted on our closing our 
 eyes till we came to just the spot where 
 the view was most perfect, and then he 
 drew in his horses, gave the word, and we 
 looked on a valley as lovely as a dream. 
 I am glad that we saw it as we did, after a 
 long prelude of shaded roads and sentinel 
 trees. Nowadays you rush to it madly 
 by train and motor. Then it was a dear 
 secret hidden away in the heart of the for- 
 est. 
 
 [i4Sl 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 We spent five days at the hotel by the 
 Merced River, feasting on beauty and 
 mountain trout, and lulled by the murmur 
 of that gentle stream. Moonlight illu- 
 mined the whiteness of the Yosemite Falls 
 in full view of the hotel verandah as it 
 makes the double leap down a dark gorge. 
 We could see a great deal with very little 
 effort, but after a day or two I began to 
 look longingly upward toward the moun- 
 tain trails. At last a chance came, and 
 "Why Not" led me to embrace it. A 
 wholesale milliner from Los Angeles in- 
 vited me to join his party. We had seen 
 him at various places along our way, so 
 that it was not entirely out of a clear sky. 
 He was wall-eyed — if that is the opposite 
 of cross-eyed — ^which gave him so decidedly 
 rakish a look that it was some time before 
 I could persuade my conservative relatives 
 
 [146] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 that it would be safe for me to accept the 
 invitation, but as the party numbered ten, 
 mostly female, they finally gave me their 
 blessing. Being the last comer, and the 
 mules being all occupied, I had to take a 
 horse, which I was sorry for, as they aren't 
 supposed to be quite as sure-footed on the 
 trail. The party all urged me to be cau- 
 tious, with such emphasis that I began to 
 wonder if I had been wise to come, when 
 Charley, our guide, told me not to pay 
 any attention to them, that I had the best 
 mount of the whole train. Charley, by 
 the way, was all that Al Stevens was not, 
 and added the note of picturesqueness and 
 romance which my soul had been craving. 
 He was young, blond, and dressed for the 
 part, and would have entranced a moving- 
 picture company ! The wholesale milliner 
 called me "Miss Black Eyes," and was so 
 
 [147] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 genial in manner that I joined Charley at 
 the end of the parade and heard stories of 
 his life which may or may not have been 
 true. Every now and then Jesse James, 
 an especially independent mule, would 
 pause, and with deUberation and vigor kick 
 at an inaccessible fly on the hinder parts 
 of his person, while his rider shrieked 
 loudly for help, and the procession halted 
 till calm was restored. At last we reached 
 the end of the trail. Somewhere I have a 
 snap-shot of myself standing on Glacier 
 Point, that rock that juts out over the 
 valley, cHnging to Charley's hand, for I 
 found that standing there with the snow 
 falHng, looking down thousands of feet, 
 made me crave a hand to keep the snow- 
 flakes from drawing me down. The whole- 
 sale milliner and the rest considered me a 
 reckless soul, and many were the falsetto 
 
 [148] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 shrieks they emitted if I went within ten 
 feet of the edge of the precipice. They 
 did not realize the insurance and assurance 
 of Charley's hand. 
 
 Of course I endured the anguish of a 
 first horseback ride for the next day or 
 two, but it was worth it, and by the time 
 we were ready to start for home I could 
 sit down quite comfortably. The trip was 
 accomplished without a jolt or jog suffi- 
 cient to disarrange Grandmother's curls. 
 Aunty and I were always so thankful that 
 we defied the family and let her have her 
 last adventure, for soon afterward her 
 mind began to grow dim. For myself, I 
 treasure the memory both for her sake, 
 and because I can't climb trails myself 
 any more, and that is something I didn't 
 miss. Was it Schopenhauer or George Ade 
 who said, "What you've had you've got" ? 
 [149] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 Twenty years later another party of four, 
 consisting of a husband and two boys, were 
 led by a lady Moses into the promised land, 
 and were met by an old friend, the Civil 
 War veteran, with a motor instead of his 
 pair of black horses ! He was too old to 
 drive, but he had come to welcome me 
 back. Billie and Joedy were thrilled. 
 They adored the tales of his twelve battles 
 and the hole in his knee, even more than 
 their mother had before them, being 
 younger and boys. It was as lovely a land 
 as I had remembered it, only, of course, 
 there were changes. The motor showed 
 that. I should not say that the tempo of 
 life had been quickened so much as that 
 its radius had been widened, or that the 
 focus was different; the old spell was 
 the same. To reconcile the past and the 
 present, I have thought of a beautiful com- 
 [ISO] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 promise. Why not a motor van ? The 
 family jeered at me when I first suggested 
 that we spend J 's next vacation mean- 
 dering up the coast in one. Of course, the 
 boys adored the idea at first, but sober 
 second thoughts for mother made them 
 pause. 
 
 Billie: "But, Muvs, you'd hate it, you 
 couldn't have a box spring!" 
 
 Joedy: "And you don't like to wash 
 dishes." 
 
 Quite true. I had thought of all that 
 myself. I don't Hke to wash dishes, but 
 we use far more than we really need to use, 
 and anyway I had rather decided that I 
 wouldn't wash them. As to the bed- 
 spring, I could have an air mattress, for 
 while it's a little like sleeping on a captive 
 balloon, it doesn't irritate your bones like 
 a camp cot. 
 
 [iSi] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 The family distrust of me, as a vaga- 
 bond, dates from a camping trip last Au- 
 gust to celebrate Billie's twelfth birthday. 
 It lasted only one night, so "trip" is a 
 large word to apply to it, but I will say 
 that for one night it had all the time there 
 could be squeezed into it. We selected a 
 site on the beach almost within hallooing 
 distance of the Smihng Hill-Top, borrowed 
 a tent and made camp. I loved the fire 
 and frying the bacon and the beat of the 
 waves, but I did not like the smell of the 
 tent. It was stuffy. I had been gen- 
 erously given that shelter for my own, 
 while the male members of the party slept 
 
 by a log (not like one, J confessed to 
 
 me) under a tarpaulin — I mean "tarp" — 
 with stars above them except when ob- 
 scured by fog. My cot was short and low 
 and I am not, so that I spent the night 
 
 I 152 ] 
 
THE LAND OF WHYNOT 
 
 tucking in the blankets. The puppies en- 
 joyed it all thoroughly. Though they 
 must have been surprised by the sudden 
 democratic intimacy of the situation, they 
 are opportunists and curled themselves in, 
 on, and about my softer portions, so that 
 I had to push them out every time I wanted 
 to turn over, which was frequently. I 
 urged them to join the rest of the party 
 under the "tarp," but they were firm, as 
 they weren't minding the hardness of the 
 cot, and they don't care especially about 
 ventilation. I greeted the dawn with 
 heartfelt thanksgiving, and yet I'm as keen 
 about my vacation idea as ever. I have 
 simply learned what to do and what not 
 to do, and it won't matter to me in the 
 least whether my ways are those of a ten- 
 derfoot or not. Why not be comfortable 
 physically as well as spiritually ? Think 
 liS3] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 of the independence of it ! To be able to 
 sit at the feet of any view that you fancy 
 till you are ready to move on ! Doesn't 
 that amount to **free will" ? Yes, I am 
 resolved to try it out and Billie says if I 
 make up my mind to something I generally 
 get my way (being descended from Grand- 
 mother probably accounts for it), so if you 
 should see a rather fat, lazy green van 
 with **Why not ?" painted over the back 
 door, you may know that two grown vaga- 
 bonds, two young vagabonds, and two 
 vagabond pups, are on the trail following 
 the gypsy patter an. 
 
 [iS4l 
 
MR. JONES meets his friend, Mr. 
 Brown ; 
 ** Surprised to see that your house is for 
 sale, Brown." 
 
 "Oh — er — ^yes" replies Brown; "that is, 
 I don't know. I keep that sign up on the 
 lawn." Then with a burst of confidence: 
 "Mrs. Brown meets so many nice people 
 that way, don't you know!" 
 
 So it is that we have a reputation for 
 being willing to sell anything in CaHfornia, 
 [iSS] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 even our souls. Of course, it isn't at all 
 necessary to have a sign displaying "For 
 Sale" to have constant inquiries as to the 
 price of your place. After the days of 
 "The Sabine Farm" were only a lovely 
 memory, we bought a bungalow in Pasa- 
 dena, or, rather, we are buying it on the 
 instalment plan. It is really an adorable 
 little place with a very flowery garden, sur- 
 rounded by arbors covered with roses, 
 wistaria, and jasmine (I think I should say 
 we have been very fortunate in our dwell- 
 ing-places since we emigrated), and passers- 
 by usually stop and comment favorably. 
 Young men bring their girls and show them 
 the sort of little place they'd like to own, 
 and often they ring the door-bell for fur- 
 ther inquiries. Driven to bay, I have put 
 a price of half a million on our tiny estate. 
 When I mention this, the investigators usu- 
 
 [156] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 ally retreat hastily, looking anxiously over 
 their shoulders to see if my keeper is any- 
 where in sight. As to the real-estate men, 
 they are more in number than the sands 
 of the sea, and the competition is razor- 
 edged. If you have the dimmest idea of 
 ever buying a lot or house, or if you are 
 comfortably without principle, you won't 
 need to keep a motor at all. The real- 
 estate men will see that you get lots of fresh 
 air, and they are most obliging about let- 
 ting you do your marketing on the way 
 home. We have an especial friend in the 
 business. He never loses hope, or his 
 temper. It was he that originally found 
 us "The Sabine Farm." He let us live 
 there in peace till we were rested, for which 
 we are eternally grateful, and then he 
 began to throw out unsettling remarks. 
 The boys ought to have a place to call 
 [IS7] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 home where they could grow up with asso- 
 ciations. Wasn't it foolish to pay rent 
 when we might be applying that money 
 toward the purchase of a house ? Of course 
 it told on us in time and we began to look 
 about. "The Sabine Farm " would not do, 
 
 as it was too far from J 's business, and 
 
 the lotus-flower existence of our first two 
 years was ours no longer. Every lot we 
 looked at had irresistible attractions, and 
 insurmountable objections. At last, how- 
 ever, we settled on a piece of land looking 
 toward the mountains, with orange trees 
 on either hand, paid a part of the price, 
 and supposed it was ours for better or 
 worse. Just then the war darkened and 
 we felt panicky, but heaven helped us, for 
 there was a flaw in the title, and our money 
 came trotting back to us, wagging its tail. 
 It was after this that we stumbled on the 
 [IS8] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 arbored bungalow, and bought it in fifteen 
 
 minutes. I asked Mr. W if he liked 
 
 bass fishing, and whether he'd ever found 
 one gamier to land than our family. He 
 will probably let us live quietly for a little 
 while, and then he will undoubtedly tell 
 us that this place is too small for us. I 
 know him ! 
 
 In case of death or bankruptcy the situa- 
 tion is much more intense. Every mouse 
 hole has its alert whiskered watcher, and 
 after a delay of a few days for decency, 
 such pressure is brought to bear that sur- 
 viving relatives rarely have the courage to 
 stand pat. Probably a change of sur- 
 roundings is good for them. 
 
 If people can't be induced to sell, often 
 
 they will rent. There is an eccentric old 
 
 woman in town who owns a most lovely 
 
 lot, beautifully planted, that is the hope 
 
 [IS9] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 and snare of every real-estate man, but, 
 though poor, she will not part with it. 
 She has a house, however, that she rents 
 in the season. One day some Eastern 
 people were looking at it, and timidly said 
 that one bath-room seemed rather scant 
 for so large a house. 
 
 "Oh, do you think so ?" said Mrs. Rid- 
 dle. *'It is enough for us. Mr. Riddle 
 and I aren't what you'd call bathers. In 
 fact, Mr. Riddle doesn't bathe at all; I 
 sponge!" 
 
 Real estate isn't the only interest of the 
 West. We all read the advertising page 
 of the local paper just as eagerly as we do 
 the foreign news. If I feel at all lonely 
 or bored I generally advertise for some- 
 thing. Once I wanted a high-school boy 
 to drive the motor three afternoons a week. 
 The paper was still moist from the press 
 [i6o] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 when my applicants began to telephone. 
 I took their names and gave them appoint- 
 ments at ten-minute intervals all the fol- 
 lowing morning, only plugging the tele- 
 phone when J and I felt we must have 
 
 some sleep. In the morning, forgetting the 
 little wad of paper we had placed in the 
 bell, I took down the receiver to call the 
 market, when a tired voice started as if I 
 had pressed a button: 
 
 "I saw your 'ad' in the paper last night, 
 etc." When they arrived they ranged in 
 age from sixteen to sixty. The latter was 
 a retired clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Bain, 
 who said he drove for his wife, but (here 
 he fitted his finger-tips together, and 
 worked them back and forth in a manner 
 that was a blend of jauntiness and cor- 
 diality) he thought he could fit us both 
 in! 
 
 [ i6i ] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 I blush to state that I selected a younger 
 chauffeur ! Emboldened by the success of 
 my first advertising venture, I decided to 
 try again. This time I wished to sell our 
 superfluous old furniture. The war has 
 made me dislike anything about the place 
 that isn't really in use. Having lived 
 some years in Pennsylvania, and having 
 amassed quite a collection of antique ma- 
 hogany furniture, I felt justified in thin- 
 ning out a few tables and odd pieces that 
 our desirable bungalow is too small to 
 hold. The results weren't as pronounced 
 as before, but they quite repaid me. I 
 sold my best table to a general, which gave 
 me a lot of confidence, but my greatest 
 triumph was a hat-rack. It was a barren, 
 gaunt-looking affair, like a leafless tree in 
 winter, but it was mahogany, and it was 
 old. Two ladies who were excitedly buy- 
 
 [162] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 ing tables spied it, and exclaimed in rap- 
 ture. I rose to the occasion: 
 
 "That is the most unusual piece I have/* 
 I unblushingly gushed. "It is solid ma- 
 hogany and very old. I never saw another 
 like it. Yes, I would sell it for twenty-five 
 dollars." 
 
 They both wanted it — I was almost 
 afraid it might make feeling between them, 
 till I soothed the loser by selling her an old 
 brass tea-kettle that I had picked up in a 
 curiosity shop in Oxford years ago. It 
 was so old that it had a hole in it, which 
 seemed to clinch the matter. I sent for 
 the packer the moment they were out of 
 the house, and had the things boxed and 
 away before they could change their minds. 
 
 When I showed J the money, he said 
 
 I was wasting my time writing, that he 
 was sure I had a larger destiny. 
 
 [ 163 ] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 Speaking of having furniture boxed car- 
 ries me back to the time when we lived in 
 Pennsylvania and I bought many things 
 of a pleasant old rascal who just managed 
 to keep out of jail. One time he showed 
 me a lovely old table of that ruddy glow- 
 ing mahogany that adds so much to a room. 
 I said I would take it, but told him not to 
 send it home till afternoon. I wanted 
 
 time to break it to J after a good 
 
 luncheon. J was very amiable and 
 
 approving, and urged me to have it sent 
 up, so I went down to the shop to see 
 about it. To my dismay I found it neatly 
 crated and just being loaded into a wagon. 
 I called frantically to my rascally friend, 
 who tried to slip out of the back door un- 
 observed, but in vain. I fixed him with 
 an accusing eye. 
 
 *'What are you doing with my table?" 
 I demanded. 
 
 [164] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 "Did you really want it?'' he queried. 
 
 "Of course I want it. Didn't I say Vd 
 take it ?" I was annoyed. 
 
 "Oh, well," to his men, "take it off, 
 boys." "You see," turning to me, " a man 
 from Seattle was in after you left, and he 
 said he'd take that round table over there 
 if I'd sell him this one too. I showed him 
 another one every bit as good as this, but 
 he wouldn't look at it; still, I guess I'll 
 box it up in that crate with his round one, 
 and when it gets to Seattle I reckon he 
 won't want to send it way back. It's a 
 long way to Seattle !" 
 
 "That's your business, not mine," I re- 
 marked coldly, though I felt an unholy 
 desire to laugh. "Just send mine home 
 before any one else tempts you." 
 
 I still sleep in a Hepplewhite four-poster 
 that he wheedled out of an old Pennsyl- 
 vania Dutch woman for a mere song. The 
 [i6s] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 posts at the head were sawed ofF so that the 
 bed could stand in a room with a sloping 
 ceiling, but, fortunately, the thrifty owner 
 had saved the pieces instead of using them 
 for firewood, so I have had them neatly 
 stuck on again. 
 
 I think perhaps a subconscious recollec- 
 tion of his methods was what made me so 
 successful with the hat-rack. 
 
 War work has brought out much latent 
 ability of this kind. Lilies of the field, 
 who had never needed to toil or spin for 
 themselves, were glad to do so for the Red 
 Cross. In Pasadena we had a small Span- 
 ish street (inside a building), with tiny 
 shops on either side, where you could buy 
 anything from an oil painting to a summer 
 hat. In front was a gay little plaza with 
 vines and a fountain, where lunch and tea 
 were served by the prettiest girls in town 
 [i66] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 in bewitching frilled caps with long black 
 streamers and sheer lawn aprons over blue 
 and green frocks. The Tired Business 
 Men declined to lunch anywhere else, and 
 there was a moment when we feared it 
 might have to be given up, as there was 
 some feeling in town on account of the 
 vacant stools at their old-time counters ! 
 It all went to prove that you don't need 
 to be brought up in "trade" to be a great 
 success at it. 
 
 No one has stuck to his or her usual role 
 in the past two years, which has added a 
 piquancy to life. We have all wanted to 
 do our bit and the "Why not .?" that I feel 
 so strongly in CaHfornia has spread over 
 the whole country. In order to make the 
 most efficient use of the newly discovered 
 talents on every side, the Red Cross sent 
 out cards with blanks to be filled by all 
 
 [167] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 those ready to work, asking what they felt 
 themselves fitted to do, when could they 
 work, and how long. One card read "will- 
 ing but nervous, might possibly pray." 
 
 Our Red Cross Street brought in many 
 people full of enthusiasm and energy, who 
 might never have rolled a bandage. I 
 shan't soon forget the strenuous days of 
 
 its^opening. J and another diplomat, 
 
 who also has a talent for pouring oil on 
 troubled waters, were in charge of the 
 financial part of the enterprise, and theirs 
 was the task of seeing that none of the 
 chapter funds were used, so that no possi- 
 ble criticism could arise. A pretty young 
 actress offered to give a premiere of a 
 comedy which she was about to take on 
 the road, for the benefit of the street, and 
 every one was delighted until they saw a 
 rehearsal. It was one of those estranged- 
 [ i68 ] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 husband-one-cocktail-too-many farces, full 
 
 of innuendo and profanity. J and his 
 
 partner were much upset, but it was too 
 late to withdraw. The company, in defer- 
 ence to the Red Cross, agreed to leave out 
 everything but the plain damns. Even 
 then it wasn't what they would have 
 chosen, and two very depressed ** angels" 
 met in the hall of the High School Audi- 
 torium, on the night of the performance. 
 Nothing had gone right. The tickets were 
 late coming from the printer, the advertis- 
 ing man had had tonsilitis, every one was 
 "fed up" with Red Cross entertainments, 
 and it was pouring in torrents. There was 
 a sprinkling of gallant souls on the first 
 floor of the big hall, and that was all. The 
 fact that they wouldn't make much money 
 wasn't what was agitating the "angels" 
 nearly as much as the wrath of the pink- 
 
 [169] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 and-white lady about to appear. Then 
 came the inspiration. I wish I could say 
 
 it was J 's idea, but it was Mr. M 's. 
 
 A night school of several hundred is in ses- 
 sion in that building every evening, and a 
 cordial invitation to see a play free brought 
 the whole four hundred in a body to fill 
 the auditorium, if not completely, at least 
 creditably. They loved it and were loud 
 in their applause. The "damns" didn't 
 bother them a bit. They encored the 
 lady, which, combined with a mammoth 
 bouquet, provided by the "management," 
 gave the whole thing quite a triumphant 
 air. When we all went behind the scenes 
 after the play, the atmosphere was really 
 balmy. The lady expressed herself as 
 greatly pleased and gratified by so large 
 and enthusiastic an audience. ("On such 
 a bad night, too!") I retired behind a 
 [ 170 ] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 bit of scenery and pinched myself till I felt 
 less hilarious. One thing I know, and that 
 is that if J should ever change his busi- 
 ness it won't be to go into any theatrical 
 enterprise. I don't think even the "mov- 
 ies" could lure him, and yet she was a 
 very pretty actress ! 
 
 It is a far cry from blonde stars to fu- 
 nerals, but J feels no change of subject, 
 
 however abrupt, is out of place when talk- 
 ing of his ** first night," so I would like to 
 say a few words about that branch of Cali- 
 fornia business. In the first place, no one 
 ever dies out here until they are over 
 eighty, unless they are run over or meet 
 
 with some other accident. J says that 
 
 old ladies in the seventies, driving electrics, 
 are the worst menace to life that we have. 
 When our four-score years and ten have 
 been lived — probably a few extra for good 
 
 [ 171 ] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 measure — an end must come, but a Cali- 
 fornia funeral is so different ! A Los Ange- 
 les paper advertises "Perfect Funerals at 
 Trust Prices." We often meet them bowl- 
 ing gayly along the boulevards, the motor 
 hearse maintaining a lively pace, which the 
 mourners are expected to follow. The 
 
 nearest J ever came to an accident 
 
 was suddenly meeting one on the wrong 
 side of the road, and the funeral chauffeur's 
 language was not any more scriptural than 
 
 J 's. As we were nowhere near eighty, 
 
 we felt we had a lot of life still coming to 
 us and gave grateful thanks for our escape. 
 Life is a good thing. I maintain it in 
 the face of pessimists, but it is a particu- 
 larly good thing in California, with its sun- 
 shine and its possibilities. I shan't go on 
 because I believe I have said something of 
 this same sort before. It makes you ready 
 [172] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 for the next thing, whatever that may be, 
 and you feel pretty sure that it will be in- 
 teresting. It's a kind of perpetual "night 
 before Christmas " feeling. Some time ago 
 when I picked up my evening paper my 
 eye fell on this advertisement: 
 
 "Wanted: A third partner in a well- 
 established trading business in the South 
 Seas. Schooner now fitting out in San 
 Francisco to visit the Islands for cargo of 
 copra, pearls, sandalwood, spices, etc. 
 Woman of forty or over would be consid- 
 ered for clerical side of enterprise, with 
 headquarters on one of the islands. This 
 is a strictly business proposition — no one 
 with sentiment need apply." 
 
 When I read it first I couldn't believe it. 
 
 I rubbed my eyes and read it again. 
 
 There it was next to the Belgian hares, the 
 
 bargains in orange groves and the rebuilt 
 
 [173] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 automobiles. It was fairly reeking with 
 romance. I felt like finding an under- 
 study for my job at home, boarding the 
 schooner and sailing blithely out of the 
 Golden Gate. The South Seas is the next 
 stop beyond Southern California. I think 
 I could keep their old books, though I 
 never took any prizes in arithmetic at 
 school. How amusing it would be to enter 
 in my ledger instead of "two dozen eggs" 
 and "three pounds of butter," "two dozen 
 pearls at so much a dozen " (or would they 
 be entered by ounces ?) and "fifty pounds 
 of sandalwood," or should I reckon that 
 by cords ? I could find out later. I would 
 wear my large tortoise-shell spectacles 
 (possibly blinders in addition), and I 
 should attend strictly to business for 
 a while, but when a full moon rose over a 
 South Sea lagoon, and the palm trees 
 [174] 
 
WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS 
 
 rustled and the phosphorescence broke in 
 silver on the bow of the pearl schooner, 
 where she rode at anchor in our little bay, 
 could I keep my contract and avoid senti- 
 ment ? How ridiculous to suppose that 
 stipulating that the lady should be 
 forty or over would make any difference ! 
 What is forty ? If they had said that she 
 must be a cross-eyed spinster with a hare- 
 lip, it would have been more to the point. 
 I'm not a spinster or cross-eyed, but why 
 go on ? I don't intend to commit myself 
 about the age limit. I don't have to, be- 
 cause I am not going to apply for the posi- 
 tion, after all. I have a South Sea tem- 
 perament but as it is securely yoked to a 
 New England upbringing, the trade wind 
 will only blow the sails of my imagination 
 to that sandalwood port. 
 
 [ 175 ] 
 
WE saw a most amusing farce some 
 time ago which contained much in- 
 teresting information concerning the worth 
 of advertising. I forget the fabulous figure 
 at which "The Gold Dust Twins" trade- 
 mark is valued, but I know that it easily 
 puts them into Charley ChapHn's class. I 
 am sure that "Sunkist" cannot be far 
 
 [176] 
 
SUNKIST 
 
 behind the "Twins," for no single word 
 could possibly suggest a more luscious, de- 
 lectable, and desirable fruit than that. It 
 would even take the curse ofF being a 
 lemon to be a " Sunkist " lemon. It con- 
 tains no hint of the perilous early life of an 
 orange. Truly that life is more chancey 
 than an aviator's. They say that in the 
 good old days there were no frosts, but that 
 irrigation is gradually changing the climate 
 of Southern California. We would not 
 dare to express an opinion on this much 
 discussed point, as we have never gone to 
 any new place where the climate has been 
 able to stand the shock. It is always an 
 unusual season. I do know, however, that 
 bringing up a crop of oranges is as anxious 
 an undertaking as "raising" a family. 
 Little black smudge pots stand in rows in 
 the groves, ready to be lighted at the first 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 hint of frost. The admonition of the 
 hymn applies to fruit growers as well as 
 to foolish virgins: 
 
 "See that yourllamps are burning. 
 Your vessels filled with oil." 
 
 On sharp mornings the valleys are full 
 of a gray haze still lingering protectingly 
 over the ranches. Then there are blights. 
 I don't pretend to know all the ills the 
 orange is heir to. Sometimes it grows too 
 fat and juicy and cracks its skin, and 
 sometimes it is attacked by scale. Every 
 tree has to be swathed in a voluminous 
 sheet and fumigated once a year at great 
 expense. After living out here some time, 
 I began to understand why even in the 
 heart of the orange country we sometimes 
 pay fifty cents a dozen for the large fruit. 
 There is a way, however, of getting around 
 
 [1781 
 
SUNKIST 
 
 the high cost of living in this particular — 
 you can go to a packing house and buy for 
 thirty-five cents an entire box of what are 
 called culls — oranges too large or too small 
 for shipping, or with some slight imperfec- 
 tion that would not stand transportation, 
 but are as good for most purposes as the 
 "Sunkist" themselves. 
 
 In California, Orange Day is next in im- 
 portance to Washington's Birthday and 
 the Fourth of July. I shall never forget 
 our first experience of its charms. We 
 were motoring, taking a last jaunt in an 
 old machine which we had just sold for 
 more than we ever had expected to get 
 for it. It was a reckless thing to do, for 
 we had no spare tire and it is very like 
 speculating in oil stocks to start for a run 
 of any length under those circumstances. 
 It worked out about as it would have done 
 [ 179 ] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 if we had been trifling with the stock mar- 
 ket. A rear tire blew out, and we were 
 put under the disagreeable necessity of giv- 
 ing our purchaser more nearly his money's 
 worth. This was a poor start for a holi- 
 day, but being near a delightful inn, we 
 crept slowly to town on our rim and found 
 a fete awaiting us. We also found friends 
 from the East who asked us all to lunch, 
 thereby, as one member of the party put 
 it in Pollyanna's true spirit, much decreas- 
 ing the price of the new tire. The inn is 
 built in Spanish style and we lunched in a 
 courtyard full of gaudy parrots, singing 
 birds in wicker cages and singing seiioritas 
 as gay as the parrots, on balconies above 
 us. The entire menu was orange, or at 
 least colored orange. It was really charm- 
 ing, and our spirits rose to almost a cham- 
 pagne pitch, though orange juice — diluted 
 [i8o] 
 
SUNKIST 
 
 at that — was the only beverage served. (I 
 believe that there is a Raisin Day, also, 
 but on account of its horrid association 
 with rice and bread puddings we have let 
 that slip by unnoticed.) 
 
 Our California color scheme is the very 
 latest thing in decorative art. There is 
 nothing shrinking about us, for we come 
 boldly forth in orange and yellows in true 
 cigar - ribbon style — even our motor li- 
 censes of last year had poppies on them. 
 Speaking of poppies, I heard the other day 
 of a lady who voiced her opinion in all 
 seriousness in the paper, that Mr. Hoover 
 should have California poppy seeds sent 
 to him for distribution among the Belgians 
 to sow over the ruins of their country. Of 
 course there is something in the power of 
 suggestion, and I suppose it would brighten 
 up the landscape. Joedy is strong on the 
 [ i8i ] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 color idea. We had a neighbor who had 
 a terrible attack of jaundice, which turned 
 her the color of a daffodil. I was saying 
 what a pity it was, then Joedy observed: 
 "Well, Muvs, I think she makes a nice 
 bright spot of color ! " 
 
 There is a road leading toward the San 
 Fernando Valley, with fruit stalls on both 
 sides, very gay" with oranges, grape-fruit, 
 and lemons. One particularly alluring 
 stand is presided over by a colored mammy 
 in bandana shades, turban and all. 
 
 All this profusion makes one feel that 
 it is no trick to get a living out of this very 
 impulsive soil, but before buying a plot of 
 one*s own, it is wise to see the seasons 
 through. California is a very unexpected 
 country. You see a snug Httle ranch, good 
 soil, near a railroad, just what you were 
 looking for, but three months of the year 
 
 [182] 
 
SUNKIST 
 
 it may be under water. After the spring 
 rains we once went for a change of air to 
 one of the beaches, which we particularly 
 disliked, because it was the only place 
 that we could get to, bridges being out in 
 all directions. For the same reason it was 
 so packed with other visitors, maybe as 
 unwilling as we, that we had a choice of 
 sleeping in the park or taking a small 
 apartment belonging to a Papa and Mama 
 Dane. It was full of green plush and calla 
 lilies, but we chose it in preference to the 
 green grass and calla Hlies of the park. 
 We passed an uneasy and foggy week 
 there. I slept in a bed which disappeared 
 
 into a bureau and J on a lounge that 
 
 curled up like a jelly roll by day. Mama 
 Dane gave us breakfast in the family sit- 
 ting-room where a placard hung, saying, 
 "God hears all that you say." J and 
 
 [183] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 I took no chances, and ate in silence. 
 Anyway, the eggs were fresh. We explored 
 the country as well as we could in the fog, 
 and found quite a large part of it well 
 under water. On one ranch we met a mo- 
 rose gentleman in hip boots, wading about 
 his property, which looked like a pretty 
 lake with an R. F. D. box sticking up here 
 and there like a float on a fishing line, while 
 a gay party of boys and girls were rowing 
 through an avenue of pepper trees in an 
 old boat. The gentleman in the hip boots 
 
 had bought his place in summer! J 
 
 and I decided then and there that if we 
 ever bought any property in Cahfornia, it 
 would be in the midst of the spring rains, 
 but we know now that even that wouldn't 
 be safe — another element has to be reck- 
 oned with besides water — fire. 
 Of course Rain in California is spelled 
 
 [1841 
 
SUNKIST 
 
 with a capital R. Noah spelled it that 
 way, but we didn't before we came West. 
 It swells the streams, which in summer are 
 nothing but trickles, to rushing torrents 
 in no time. Bridges snap Hke twigs, dams 
 burst, telegraph lines collapse; rivers even 
 change their courses entirely, if they feel 
 like it, so that it would really be a good 
 idea to build extra bridges wherever it 
 seemed that a temperamental river might 
 decide to go. I have heard of a farmer 
 who wrote to one of the railroads, saying, 
 "Will you please come and take your 
 bridge away from my bean-field I I want 
 to begin ploughing." 
 
 This adds natural hazards to the real- 
 estate game. There are others — Fire, as 
 I said a moment ago. I have a very pro- 
 found respect for the elements since we 
 have come West to live. A forest fire is 
 [ i8S ] 
 
THE SMILING HILI^TOP 
 
 even more terrifying than a flood, and in 
 spite of the eagle eyes of the foresters 
 many are the lovely green slopes burned 
 over each year. I have seen a brush fire 
 marching over a hill across the canyon 
 from us, like an army with banners — flying 
 our colors of orange and yellow — driving 
 terrified rabbits and snakes ahead of it, 
 and fought with the fervor of Crusaders 
 by the property owners in its path. 
 
 The very impulsiveness of the climate 
 seems to give the most wonderful results 
 in the way of vegetables and fruit. Around 
 Pasadena there are acres and acres of truck 
 gardens, developed with Japanese eflR- 
 ciency. I love al fresco marketing. If I 
 can find time once a week to motor up the 
 valley and fill the machine with beautiful, 
 crisp, fresh green things of all kinds, it 
 makes housekeeping a pleasure. The lit- 
 [i86] 
 
SUNKIST 
 
 tie Japanese women are so smiling and 
 pleasant, with their "Good-by, come gen," 
 the melons are so luscious, the eternal 
 strawberry so ripe and red, the orange 
 blossom honey so delectable, and every- 
 thing is so cheap compared to what we 
 had been used to in the East! I think 
 that in San Diego one can live better on a 
 small income than anywhere in the coun- 
 try. Once some intimate friends of ours 
 gave us a dinner there in January that 
 could not have been surpassed in New 
 York. The menu included all the delica- 
 cies in season and out of season, fresh 
 mushrooms, alligator pears and pheasants. 
 J and I looked at one another in min- 
 gled enjoyment and dismay that so much 
 was being done for us. Finally our host 
 could not help telling us how much for 
 each person this wonderful meal was cost- 
 L187] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 ing, including some very fetching drinks 
 called "pink skirts." You wouldn't be- 
 lieve me if I told how little ! 
 
 One more delicacy of which we make 
 rather a specialty: I should call it a climate 
 sandwich. If you live in the invigorating 
 air of the foothills, to motor to the sea, a 
 run of some thirty miles from where we 
 live in winter, spend several hours on the 
 sand, and before dark turn "Home to Our 
 Mountains'* gives a mountain air sand- 
 wich with sea-breeze filling — a singularly 
 refreshing and satisfying dainty. 
 
 Perhaps my enthusiasm for California 
 sounds a little like cupboard love. There 
 is a certain type of magazine which pub- 
 lishes the most alluring pictures of food, 
 salads and desserts, even a table with the 
 implements laid out ready for canning 
 peaches, that holds a fatal fascination for 
 [188] 
 
SUNKIST 
 
 me. I have even noticed J looking at 
 
 one with interest. When my father comes 
 out to visit us every spring, the truck gar- 
 dens, the packing houses, and the cost of 
 Hving here, I think, affect him in much the 
 same way that those magazines do me, and 
 I wonder if every one, except a dyspeptic, 
 doesn't secretly like to hear and see these 
 very things ! Could it be the reason peo- 
 ple used to paint so much still life ? — bas- 
 kets of fruit, a hunter's game-bag, a 
 divided melon, etc. I frankly own that 
 they would thrill me more if I knew their 
 market price, so that I might be imagining 
 what delightful meals I could offer my 
 family without straining the household 
 purse, which is my excuse for the intimate 
 details concerning food and prices which 
 I have given. 
 
 Surely human beings ought to respond 
 [189] 
 
THE SMILING HILL-TOP 
 
 as the fruits do to this climate, in spirit as 
 well as in body, and become a very mellow, 
 amiable, sweet-tempered lot of people, and 
 I think they do. Even the "culls" are 
 almost as good as the rest, though they 
 won't bear transportation. It is the land 
 of the second chance, of dreams come true, 
 of freshness and opportunity, of the wide- 
 ness of out-of-doors — **Sunkist!" 
 
 The End 
 
 [190] 
 
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