as the pelting shower is over. I do not find the raw, searching dampness of our Eastern seashore resorts. Here we are said to have “dry fogs” and an ideal marine atmosphere, but it was too cold for comfort during the March rains for those not in robust health.
As I sit in the upper gallery and watch the throng issuing from the dining-room, I make a nice and unerring social distinction between the Toothpick Brigade who leave the table with the final mouthful semi-masticated, and those who have an air of finished contentment.
The orchestra is unusually good, giving choice selections admirably executed. I have not decided whether music at meals is a blessing or otherwise. If sad, it seems a mockery; if gay, an interruption. For one extremely sensitive to time and tune it is difficult to eat to slow measures. And when the steak is tough and a galop is going on above, it is hard to keep up.
Among the many fleeting impressions of faces and friends here, one or two stand out clearly and indelibly— stars of the first magnitude in the nebul?—as dear Grandma Wade from Chicago, the most attractive old lady I ever met: eighty-three years old, with a firm step, rotund figure, and sweet, unruffled face, crowned with the softest snow-white curls, on which rests an artistic cap trimmed with ribbons of blue or delicate heliotrope, and small artificial flowers to match. I have known several interesting octogenarians, but never one that surpassed her in loveliness, wit, and positive jollity. Her spontaneous fun is better than the labored efforts of many a famous humorist.
She still has her ardent admirers among men as well as women, and now and then receives an earnest proposal from some lonely old fellow.
The last of these aged lovers, when refused and relegated to the position of a brother, urged her to reconsider this important matter, making it a subject of prayer. But she quietly said, “I’m not going to bother the Lord with questions I can answer myself.” When choked by a bread-crumb at table, she said to the frightened waiter, as soon as she had regained her breath, “Never mind, if that did go down the wrong way, a great many good things have gone down the right way this winter.”
She is invariably cheerful, and when parting with her son for the winter she said, “Well, John, I want to know before I go just what you have left me in your will!” which little joke changed a tear into a smile.
Even when ill she is still bright and hopeful, so that a friend exclaimed, “Grandma, I do believe you would laugh if you were dying;” and she replied, “Well, so many folks go to the Lord with a long face, I guess He will be glad to see one come in smiling.”
Oh, how repulsive the artificial bloom, the cosmetics and hair-dyes which make old age a horror, compared with her natural beauty! God bless and keep dear Grandma Wade!
Little “Ted” is another character and favorite, and his letter to his nurse in New York gives a good idea of how the place affects a bright, impressionable child.
“My dear Julia:
“
He has it all. All the trees are cultivated here, so I looked round for the one Ted spoke of, and find it lights up at night and revolves for the aid of the mariners. I think that all Californians echo his sentiment that “California is the biggest world in the country”; and compared with the hard work of the New England farmers, what is the cultivation of orchards but playing in the sand with golden oranges? Some one says that Californians “irrigate, cultivate, and exaggerate.”
Charles Nordhoff, the veteran journalist and author, lives within sight of the hotel (which he pronounces the most perfect and charming hotel he knows of in Europe or America), in a rambling bungalow consisting of three small cottages moved from different points and made into one. He believes in California for “health, pleasure, and residence.” It is a rare privilege to listen to his conversation, sitting by his open fire or at his library table, or when he is entertaining friends at dinner.
So ends my sketch of Coronado. Coronado! What a perfect word! Musical, euphonious, regal, “the crowned”! The name of the governor of New Galicia, and captain-general of the Spanish army, sent forth in 1540 in search of the seven cities of Cibola. General J. H. Simpson, U. S. A., has written a valuable monograph on “Coronado’s March,” which can be found in the Smithsonian Report for 1869.
I intend to avoid statistics and history on the one side, and extravagant eulogy on the other.
Now we will say good-by to our new friends, take one more look at Point Loma, and cross the ferry to San Diego.
CHAPTER III.
SAN DIEGO.
“The truly magnificent, and—with reason—famous port of San Diego.”— _From the first letter of Father Junipero in Alto California._
Fifteen cents for motor, ferry, and car will take you to Hotel Florence, on the heights overlooking the bay, where I advise you to stop. The Horton House is on an open, sunny site, and is frequented by “transients” and business men of moderate means. The Brewster is a first-class hotel, with excellent table. The Florence is not a large boarding-house or family hotel, but open for all. It has a friendly, homelike atmosphere, without the exactions of an ultra-fashionable resort. The maximum January temperature is seventy-four degrees, while that of July is seventy-nine degrees, and invalid guests at this house wear the same weight clothing in summer that they do in winter. The rooms of this house are all sunny, and each has a charming ocean or mountain view. It is easy to get there; hard to go away. Arriving from Coronado Beach, I was reminded of the Frenchman who married a quiet little home body after a desperate flirtation with a brilliant society queen full of tyrannical whims and capricious demands. When this was commented on as surprising, he explained that after playing with a squirrel one likes to take a cat in his lap. Really, it is so restful that the building suggests a big yellow tabby purring sleepily in the sunshine. I sat on the veranda, or piazza, taking a sun-bath, in a happy dream or doze, until the condition of nirvana was almost attained. What day of the week was it? And the season? Who could tell? And who cares? Certainly no one has the energy to decide it. Last year, going there to spend one day, I remained for five weeks, hypnotized by my environments—beguiled, deluded, unconscious of the flight of time, serenely happy. Many come for a season, and wake up after five or six years to find it is now their home. “There seems to exist in this country a something which cheats the senses; whether it be in the air, the sunshine, or in the ocean breeze, or in all three combined, I cannot say. Certainly the climate is not the home-made common-sense article of the anti-Rocky Mountain States; and unreality is thrown round life—all walk and work in a dream.”
At Coronado Beach one rushes out after breakfast for an all-day excursion or morning tramp; here one sits and sits, always intending to go somewhere or do something, until the pile of unanswered letters accumulates and the
