What a royal country is California!

I am the happy possessor of an alfalfa and orange ranch in San Jacinto county. How beautiful it is! As I stand under the trees at sunset I contemplate a scene not equaled even in the beautiful Austrian Tyrol!

Down from the mountain top, furrowed with many natural terraces from the base to the crest, trimmed by gradually receding rows of full grown orange trees to the infant ones, just planted, I look with reverence upon the valley. I see the bovine and the hog bow as the Angelus is heard. The lilac and the rose hold converse and whisper to the sun to shed less light that they may embrace and sink into the night. The chug of the practical water pump gives demonstration that it must nourish the alfalfa's life, only to destroy it, to give added life to the tenants of the velvety carpet.

All is hushed, the fowls bidden hence by the watchman, Chanticleer, to their respective homes, Mistress Hen to quench the fires and prepare for dawn. The stately Eucalyptus nods his head signifying that time is done. The sun apologetically starts away to make his daily run. The vegetables prepare themselves for the noonday meal, the barley and the oats keep tune to the zephyr's lullaby as they sink gracefully into slumberland.

From the East the gentleman called Moon appears and smilingly bids all good cheer, for, when he's on the watch, care vanishes.

All is hushed.

The twinkling of the stars seems to make a melody as they hit and strike each other down the heavens. Something moves, as if to destroy the harmony of thought. An Indian glides by with just a sign of recognition as he passes on to the adjacent mountain, which the government is pleased to call a reservation.

A limpid, casual stream flows slyly down as if fearful of discovery. The shrill, demoniac bark of the coyote gives the chickens and the goats warning that the scavenger of the desert is near, seeking to destroy. Then all is hushed again and a luminous silence known only to the few imparts to us the fact that a day has died. But another and another will yet be born—and thus they'll come and go until eternity.

Life is a bridge of sighs over which memory glides into a torrent of tears.

There is nothing so serious as fun.

I have never known a true comedian who was not a master of sentiment.

All the tragedians whom I have ever known were never more tragic than when they tried to be comic.

Chapter LXXXVI