Pasadena, March 10.

People who care more for comfort than for great “style,” who prefer a quiet, home-like, family house to one of noise and bustle, those who are seeking health, pure air and out-door life with grand views rather than the music, dancing and entertainments of a fashionable hotel may jot down as a memorandum “The Painter Hotel, at Pasadena, Cal,” thirty-five minutes by train from Los Angeles and fifteen minutes by “free ’bus” from passenger station.

It is a new house, was built in ’88; it accommodates seventy-five boarders, and is owned and kept by J. H. Painter’s Sons. The house is airy, the bedrooms are comfortably (not luxuriously) furnished, the parlor is pleasant, the class of guests select, the table is well provided, and at once, let me say, ere the important fact escapes me, the rates are remarkably low for the nice appointments and good fare supplied—only $2.50 per day for transient guests, and from $12.50 to $17.50 per week to season boarders, for people come to stay for a month or so—some spend the whole winter here. The house is open the year round, it being pleasant in summer as well as in winter. It is a mountainous district, and the ocean, from which come soft winds in summer, is only thirty minutes’ distant in a south and southwesterly direction.

Yes, and here are two more facts—Pasadena is one thousand feet above the sea, and the Painter Hotel, which is one and a half miles from the centre of the town, stands on the highest point hereabouts.

The grounds comprised in the property include ten acres, upon which the owners grow their own fruits for the table—peaches, apricots, raisins, prunes, etc.

Do you want to visit the town? Street cars pass the door of the Painter. And if you want a view it will “pay” you to climb up to the roof of the hotel, where there is an observatory. Three miles off is the Raymond Hotel, plain to your view in this clear atmosphere. On one side is the San Bernardino range of mountains, on the other the Sierra Madre range. You may see San Jacinto, ninety miles away, also Wilson’s Peak, upon which the new observatory, with its powerful lens, is to be placed; and beautiful San Gabriel valley is spread out immediately beneath you, a feature of which, at this writing, are acres of large, orange-hued poppies, so bright that you could almost imagine them aflame, especially if the wind is blowing, thus giving vibration to the thin, delicate leaves.

The drives are a most delightful feature:—to the city proper, with its wide avenues of beautiful residences, to San Gabriel mission, and to “Lucky” Baldwin’s ranch, a pleasant afternoon drive.

Those who are planning a winter or spring tour will thank me for suggesting a visit to the Painter House, but if people demand “style,” if they would dance to orchestral music; if they demand great size in a dining-room and grandeur in the drawing-room, and they are willing to pay for it, all these are also obtainable here, or rather at East Pasadena, which is only three miles distant; eight miles from Los Angeles. And the price, $4.50 per day, $21 to $28 per week, is reasonable considering what you get for the money.

Reference is made to the great Raymond Hotel, which was built in 1886, where they have a bar, as well as billiards and bowling; elevator, electric lights, a reception-room, music-room, grand parlor, and a dining-room which accommodates three hundred persons. From your seat at table you see “Old Baldy” looming above the clouds eleven thousand feet and snow-covered ten months out of the twelve, looking like a great sugar-loaf and recalling the Jungfrau, near Interlaken, Switzerland.

Like the dining-room of its modest neighbor, the Painter Hotel, every table in the Raymond is decorated daily with fresh flowers plucked from the hotel grounds—this is “winter,” mind you. The grounds of the Raymond cover a space of fifty-four acres, so there is no lack of fruit (oranges, lemons, etc.), to say nothing of the roses, blue bells, honeysuckle, dandelions, heliotropes and violets which may be picked ad libitum—if you don’t regard the painted signs.

A view from one of the Raymond’s verandas is not much unlike that from the front steps of the Grand Hotel in the Catskills, only the former is far more extensive.

The proprietor of the Raymond is W. Raymond, of Raymond’s Vacation Excursions, Boston, and the manager is C. H. Merrill, of the Crawford House, in the White Mountains. The post-office address is East Pasadena, Cal.

Orange Grove avenue and Marengo avenue and the paths in the grounds leading to the houses are lined with luxurious fan palm trees, interspersed with great cacti and not a few century plants, which it is proven here bloom much oftener than once in a hundred years. The calla lily, that delicate plant which is so tenderly cared for in the East that the flower is wrapped in cotton wool, here grows in such profusion that it is used for hedges. You will see fields of “callas” at Pasadena, raised for shipment to large cities. The whole of Pasadena is like one immense garden, a garden city indeed.

Pasadena Cottages.—You would scarcely credit it, so I won’t tell you, that some of the “cottages” in this new place are as large and elaborate as those on the New Jersey coast, between Seabright and Elberon, and some of them would not look out of place alongside the grand Newport “cottages.”

Mr. Kernaghan, editor of the Pasadena Star, has a fine home here. One of the prettiest places belongs to and is occupied by Mrs. Kimball, the widowed daughter of Rufus Hatch of New York.

Charles Frederick Holder, formerly of New York, came out here six years ago for his health, and having obtained it has made this his home. He has a cozy cottage on Orange Grove avenue in which is his study, where you may find him at his ease, wearing a short black velvet coat or smoking jacket.

Mr. Holder is a journalist and littÉrateur, a frequent contributor to current magazines and leading newspapers. He has published two or three brochures on Pasadena. One of his contributions concerning this section was an illustrated article which appeared in Harper’s Weekly. It was entitled “The Rose Tournament,” and described a beautiful ceremony which takes place here annually, on New Year’s day. Mr. Holder’s style is finished and scholarly and his language choice, with no waste of words. Being a man of cultivated taste, with a rare poetic fancy, he is at home here, when treating of this lovely country with its wealth of fruits and flowers.

Among others who have built houses and who occupy country seats at Pasadena is Governor Markham, of California. A Mr. Nelmes has a lovely ten-acre place, and with it a generous heart. A sign placed conspicuously outside his gates reads as follows: “All are welcome to drive through these private grounds and groves. Eastern tourists are each invited to pluck one orange.”

Near the Painter Hotel are many beautiful homes owned by “Eastern people.” One is owned by Dr. Green, of Woodbury, N. J., another luxurious place is that of Mr. McNally, of the publishing house in Chicago of Rand, McNally & Co.

Professor Low, of Norristown, Pa; J. W. Scoville, a Chicago banker, and E. T. Hurlburt, a capitalist of Chicago, are owners of fine estates, and of less notable places there are owners in Pasadena by the hundred.

It strikes you as rather odd to find winter and summer together, hand in hand as it were. At your feet flowers; raise your head and snow on the mountain peaks is visible to the naked eye.

The one-horse cars which ply between Pasadena and East Pasadena, California, like some of the one-horse cars of some other cities, have a driver who acts as conductor also, but the driver in the Pasadena cars serves as collector as well. There is no automatical nor mechanical contrivance to receive the fares, nor is there any way of recording them. When a passenger gets on the driver leaves the front platform, and, letting the horse take care of himself, or handing the reins to a front-platform passenger, he runs back and collects the new fare. There are not many cars on the line—one starts only every half hour—and as most of the passengers are through passengers, and few get on or off between the two points named, the animal being very docile, there is no difficulty in one man doing the whole work. The driver getting on and off his car reminds me of the elevator in Philp’s Hotel, Glasgow, which will not budge upward if there are as many as four or five people in the car. The man who runs it gives the rope a pull, on the ground floor, then leaves the car, walks up the stairs, getting up to the second or third flight in ample time to give the rope another pull and to let the passengers out.

Some people talk of the winter months in California as “the rainy season.” This may be an old story, told of what was the case years ago. It certainly is not true to-day. Examining the records, I find that from January 5 to February 1 of this year there was no rain at all in Pasadena, and in all of that time there were but two cloudy days—January 23 and January 28.

I have been in Southern California now for about three weeks and have seen it rain only on two days and one night—two days in Los Angeles and one night, for one hour, at Coronado Beach.

I don’t advise you to throw away your umbrella, as did a tourist from Colorado when coming here, but my experience would show that there is very little use for such an article in Southern California, even in what used to be called “the rainy season.”