are limited, her own disabilities serious. She cannot prevent the cold winds coming in from the boundless ocean upon her long, exposed sea-board. She cannot have her magnificent Sierras and her varied Coast Range without hot valleys between. The dry air of her summers must sometimes be laden with dust; the needful rains of winter must make dampness and discomfort. She feeds her friends with her grapes and oranges and olives; but here, as elsewhere, the earth responds only to careful cultivation. Hundreds of eastern guests have gladly accepted her generous hospitality; a few have scoffed and scorned because every breeze was not a zephyr, every acre a Gan-Eden. She has not one climate, but many; and while all are endurable to the pliant human constitution, some are of attested sanitary value. But no old Californian claims that the State is one great paradise. Few came hither for the climate. They did not think it the great end of life to find the balmiest spot on the great round globe. They came for serious and active business: if the sky were propitious, so much the better; but sky and air and temperature need not be the very choicest in all the world. Strangers must suit themselves. Those who are too tender for the common winds that blow the world over, for the alternations of heat and cold, and the belts of sterility that are found in every temperate region, may pass on, if they will, to the lazy and listless lagoons of the tropic isles. They are too exacting for the sympathies of our work-a-day people.

3. The sharpest criticism, as is natural, falls on our people. Sometimes it is indirect, sometimes direct. That which is indirect finds on this coast the best type of the rough, saucy, lawless American. It is not always a note of disparagement. Story-tellers have needed a foil to their more staid and conventional characters. Satirists must have a raw frontiersman on whom to show their wit. There used to be a type of westerner peculiar to Ohio and Kentucky; later came the trappers and hunters of the plains, with a dash of fun from Pike County and Ar-kan-saw. Western peculiarities have thus

been a variable factor of American life. The type was hardly fixed on one frontier before it was gone by; the character must be located and painted anew. Now, at length, a resting place is found, and the typical westerner is perforce a Californian. We furnish rude heroines as well as heroes: Mrs. Burnett's "Fair Barbarian," who shocked so much the proprieties of an English town, was a belle from the Pacific. Henry James's latest story has these sentences: "She was a genuine product of the Far West-a flower of the Pacific slope; ignorant, audacious, crude, but full of pluck and spirit, of natural intelligence, and of a certain intermittent, hap-hazard good taste." "When he first met her in California, she called herself Mrs. Grenville." "At San Diego she was staying with her sister, whose actual spouse (she, too, had been divorced), the principal. man of the place, kept a bank (with the aid of a six-shooter)." "She used to say that she only wanted a chance-apparently she had found one now." "Some of those western women are wonderful, Littlemore said: like her, they only want a chance." Henry James is more than half English; and the full English novelist often throws in a dash of Californian life to make American experience piquant. See, for example, the trim little Marquis of Millefleurs, in one of the late charming stories in Blackwood. Because our " Maga" happens to be published in San Francisco, instead of Edinburgh or Boston, we need not resent this trick of the novelists. They must have their effects of light and shade. The typical westerner-that is to say, the typical Californian-is just to their hand. His imputed coarseness is the needful spice.

The loud, dashing young woman from the Pacific coast is presumed to be entertaining to the average reader. We would not spoil the story-teller's best preserve; let him keep his rough heroes and audacious heroines here, to draw upon at need. They are as conventional and harmless, perhaps as necessary, as the other James's solitary horseman. Sooth to say, our done a little herself, under the brilliant touch of her first editor, to establish a new type of

Maga" has

When we turn to direct criticism of our people, we can afford to be still imperturbable. Of its general quality and reasonableness we have a sample in a bright, sketchy book, published in 1881, and written by a lady of ability. She is lavish in her praise of the friends she met, and speaks handsomely of certain beautiful views. But few things please her in the natural scenery, in the climate, in the products of the soil, in the people. In entering the State, "Cape Horn" is "not very impressive." No one who has never seen San Francisco "can imagine its bleak aspect." Anything drearier" than the ride to the Cliff House "it would be impossible to conceive." There are beautiful suburbs of San Francisco, but all "too far away." Up among the Sierras "the forest seemed tame." The Pacific itself is not spared: "I do not like this clumsy ocean. It has no salt air, no fine fish, no lively motion." Worse still, it never allows its shells and pebbles to be accessible; "a low tide I have never yet found in California." The climate, like the Turk, is simply unspeakable. "Travelers should know, in advance, that what is called the uniform climate of California is simply a uniformity of change; that each day gives variations greater than any Atlantic town can show, and that this is true all along the coast." The fog closed over San Francisco for two months. "In a clear day": "it is what they all say in California, and never yet has there been a clear day!" "I do not think there is a place on this coast fit for people who are sensitive to changes of temperature." Fruits are a failure. Melons are "cool, but neither sweet nor rich." Wagon-loads of watermelons are fed to Santa Barbara cattle, but "if not sweeter than those 'fed out' to us, the milk would be none the better." Fresh figs "have no decided flavor." "I have seen no strawberries from market that I considered eatable." "They are sweet and they are sour, but they are not fragrant." "I did not see, nor have I yet tasted, one ripe tomato among

grapes, but I have not yet eaten any: they are sour and watery, and do not tempt me." "We wandered up and down, tasting very sour grapes!" "Do all these things taste good? Not a bit of it. They bewilder the eye with their lovely colors; but one northern peach is worth them all." "The fruit which goes to market seems made for the eye only." There is a wealth of flowers, but flowers "would never reconcile me to the absence of grass." In one place there was "a quarter of an acre of lawn as green as possible"; "but, alas, the lawn was wet!" "Why have green grass, at the cost of a fortune, if you cannot walk on it or sit on it?" The eschscholtzia "stares boldly at the dry sky."

Somehow, all this disappointment in the products of the soil is connected with the shortcomings of the people. At a single dinner at the Big Trees there were "four different roasts, and three sorts of vegetables, no one well cooked!" That is a fair complaint, if one's needed pabulum is spoiled in the preparation. But what shall we say of the claim that one's hidden desires be gratified? "I have missed ice greatly in San Francisco. It has only been offered to me once; and the wealthiest persons seem to prefer to do without it." At a small party in her honor, there was, she laments, an "entire absence of fruit from our entertainment of ices and cake. There were a few grapes, but they served for decoration only." "My physician ordered me here that I might eat fruit freely, especially grapes." The author was asked to lunch, with still worse success; for there came to light the inferior caliber of the Californian mind, the lower refinement of Californian manners. "At these lunches, of course, I have seen only ladies, and they have talked in a way which can be found in all cities, but which in Boston or Washington would not be used by ladies with whom I should be thrown." "A New England woman said to me, the day after I arrived, that she had never lived anywhere where it seemed to her the women were so intelligent, and took such pains to

cultivate themselves, as in California. She lived in San José; and as I thought it hardly likely that this town would be very superior, I took occasion later to inquire where she she had lived previous to her marriage. I found it was one of the small interior towns in Maine. When an opinion is very positively pronounced, it is well to find out how wide an experience goes to its make-up." No New England country standard of intelligence and refinement for us! Let us get the best Washington tea-pot and "live up to it." At present, "in California, civilization has little to say about anything." "Better fifty years of Europe " is quoted on us without qualification. At a learned professor's house, "there was no general conversation of interest." We are consoled by the admission that "Cambridge parties used to present the same extraordinary spectacle ; . . . but we considered it a trace of provincial barbarism, and set ourselves to correct it." In California, "I seem to have lived for months without any proper social opportunities." Something might be hoped from the Academy of Sciences; but at its public meeting, in a building "dirty, dreary, and forlorn," "every member apparently spoke with the greatest reluctance, and without the slightest interest in what he was saying." This side of the Rocky Mountains "there was an entire absence of those thoughtful courtesies [in traveling] which make a woman comfortable at the East." "One thing I am sure of, and must say, and that is, that I never was in a country where the law makes such victims of women as in California." The whole region from Santa Barbara is condemned, as the boys say, "unsight, unseen"; for if the author had made the journey by stage, "it is not probable" she would "have seen a woman on the whole road!" "Certainly the 'Father of Lies' must have settled California, for no one can speak the truth here, even by accident." In San Francisco. "it is clear that drunkenness is considered no disgrace." But this is getting beyond

manners, into morals; and in this dangerous region the author leads where we do not care to follow, and prints assertions that decent Californians know to be as wide of the mark as the statements about so many things of less importance. We cover all with the mantle of a good-natured charity. In citing these hasty impeachments, we have, to use one of our author's expressions, "dall-ied longer than we had any excuse." But it is well to know the worst that is said of us; and this book, which should be entitled, A Traveler's Travails, is one of the sharpest, groutiest, most dyspeptic, most amusingly egotistic and egregious arraignments of this land of the West. For all who live here, or have become really acquainted with us, comment on its statements is needless, and argument against them would be absurd.

If there are any good people elsewhere, who are in danger of taking for truth the fictions of the novelist, or the crude impressions of an every way uncomfortable traveler, we suggest to them a few points of inquiry, to be wrought out at their leisure :

First. Who settled this Pacific coast ? Were they not chiefly from the civilized and refined Eastern States-from Maine down. to the Carolinas? If some came from the Interior, was not the Interior settled chiefly from the aforesaid East?

Second. Is it likely that a community under such leadership would so soon fall far below its first standard? Especially when we remember the constant and large reinforcements from "the sisters and the cousins and the aunts"-nay, even the daughtersof the critics themselves.

Third. Have we, or have we not, the usual appliances of a civilized, cultivated, well-ordered community-such as schools and colleges, churches, books, magazine and newspaper reading? Do we get any reading from the East? And how much?

Fourth. Would it not be well to take the word of those who live here, and know whereof they affirm?

Martin Kellogg.

CHAPTER I.

"Here is no cruel lord with murderous blade, No woven web of bloody heraldries, But mossy dells for roving comrades made, Warm valleys where the tired student lies With half-shut book, and many a winding walk, Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy, simple talk."

It was one of God's best days.

I had thrown myself down behind a tumble of hay, the yellow luxuriance of which fitted the tired back more comfortably than the softest and cosiest of lounging chairs; and fragrant, withal, as nothing but fresh, clean hay ever is. At the right of the field was a clump of trees forming a miniature grove. Below me stretched the short and seared grass; beyond, a winding road white with dust, then the river, and after that, in the distance, scattered houses; and farther still, and above, pine forest and purple, hazy hills; while over all glowed the October sunlight, warm and glorious, stealing into one's being, and through every nerve and fiber, as though it was the spirit of that rare old Tuscany wine so aptly termed "bottled sunshine."

I had forgotten to think, I believe; perhaps my eyes had closed: at least, I was unconscious of all sound, except, it may be, the chirping of crickets and the occasional twitter of some solitary bird-sounds too much a part of the day to be particularly noticeable; until close beside me I heard the shrillness of a child's petulant exclamation: "You're a fool!"

Silence for a moment, and then, mingled with sobbing, came the weaker sound of a younger child's words.

"I with it thaid-boo-hoo, boo-hoo-in the Bible-boo-hoo-he who callth hith thithter a fool!" And smothering, as best I could, my amusement at this indignant outburst of oppressed femininity, I peered out from my ambush at the youngsters.

There stood the boy, calm and indifferent, all his anger expended in the one emphatic declaration I had heard; but the little girl was fairly trembling with rage, and between her sobs stamped the tiny foot with spasmodic uncertainty upon the ground.

"Well, well, little ones; but you might be doing a great deal better than to quarrel such a beautiful day as this is; come here and have a roll in the hay, and you will feel altogether different, I am sure." And in a few minutes I had first one and then the other half buried in the fragrant mass. Then they covered me with the sweet dry wisps, and we were well tired out and much better acquainted when we sat down for a chat.

"And now, what are your names, little ones?"

"Mine's Neil Barras, and hers is Mayshe's my sister. Her whole name's Mabel, but we call her May, for short," was the answer from the mimic man.

"Neil Barras!" I exclaimed-"Neil Barras? but your father's name is not Neil, too?"

"No: papa'th name ith Maurith, but Uncle Neil'th name ith Neil," said the lisping little maiden.

"Yes, and I was named for him"; and the boy straightened himself up with an air of pride that showed decidedly his affection for Uncle Neil.

"Where is Uncle Neil now?" I asked. “O, he and papa have gone gunning, but auntie's home, so he'll come back to-night, sure," was the young Neil's reply.

In the mean while I had taken a card from my pocket, and scribbled a few words below the name upon it.

"Will you give this to Uncle Neil for me, please, when he and papa come back, and be sure of not losing it?" Of course each had an especial desire to be the favored messenger, so I was forced to give a duplicate copy to the one who was "called May,

for short," and saw them trudge off amicably, hand in hand, while I smiled with a confident feeling that only one of the cards would reach its destination.

Then I went back to my nestling place in the hay, and thought. Six years had passed since Neil Barras and I had started on our separate life-walks. We had gone through college and graduated together-good, true friends always. But Neil went to Europe, trouble in various ways came to me, sickness and death into my family. I neglected answering my friend's letters, and we drifted apart after that pitiful fashion men commonly have, even when loving each other warmly.

A year earlier than my chance meeting with these two children I had run across an old college acquaintance, who, in the midst of reminiscent gossip, suddenly asked, "Have you heard from King Cophetua lately?"

"King Cophetua! How in the world should I hear from King Cophetua? His beggar-maid was no kith nor kin of mine, and besides, I have a vague sort of an idea that the good monarch departed this life some time before I entered upon my share in it, if he ever had a more than simple poetical existence, which fact I am not at all certain about."

But

present whereabouts go uninquired for. what is it? With whom did he marry, and how and when?"

"Here, try one of my cigars (prime Manila, if you enjoy that flavor), and I'll tell you all the little I know about the affair. A light? Ah! you have one.

"Well, it seems that Neil came across some poor girl in London-you know he went there to settle for a time after 'doing' Germany and France-she was rather pretty, I have been told, and the dear old boy pitied her, helped her and her mother--he being one of those fortunate few with money enough and to spare to satisfy any whim, however extravagant-buried the elder lady when she died, for she was but a wearying invalid at her best; and then, as the finishing touch to a small story, married the young woman. I know little enough about him, but it is hard for me to understand how Neil Barras, with fine tastes and habits, born of constant association with all that cultured society brings before one, formed in and fitted to its highest ranks, could just fancy an uneducated woman of the lower order, however beautiful she might be. Yet the fact is there—he married her, and the boys unanimously speak of him now as 'King Cophetua.' But he is still abroad, and we must wait to see what charm hangs about the maid he lifted to his

This incident came up freshly to my recollection again, and I felt a strong curiosity about seeing Neil's wife. Not alone his wife either, for the old love I bore Neil, that had lain quiescent so long, began to flow up stronger than ever from my heart, and made me yearn to greet him, to feel the hearty warmth of his hand-clasp, and to look into the clear, honest eyes. It is a truth that men are better friends than women. No matter how great a period of time may elapse, how vast a space of distance and silence lies between their meetings, one is sure of finding the same firm strength and trust, knows that at the call of need the other will hasten to him and take up the thread of companionship again just where it was dropped. It is not often so between women.