—a topsy-turvy land, where you dig for your wood and climb for your coal; where water-pipes are laid above ground, with no fear of Jack Frost, and your principal rivers flow bottom side up and invisible most of the time; where the boys climb up hill on burros and slide down hills on wheels; where the trees are green all the year, and you go outdoors in December to get warm; where squirrels live in the ground with owls for chums, while rats build in the trees, and where water runs up hill; where anything unpleasant, from a seismic disturbance to mosquitoes in March, is “exceptional” and surprising. A land where there are no seasons, but where sunshine and shade are so distinctly marked that one can be easily half baked on one side and dangerously chilled on the other.
Then the Climate—spell it with a capital, and then try to think of an adjective worthy to precede it. Glorious! Delicious! Incomparable! Paradisaical!!! To a tenderfoot straight from New Hampshire, where we have nine months of winter and three of pretty cold weather, where we have absolutely but three months that are free from frost, this seems like enchanted ground.
A climate warm, with a constant refreshing coolness in its heart; cool, with a latent vivifying warmth forever peeping out of its coat-tail pocket.
June does not define it, nor September. It has no synonym, for there is nothing like it. I am glad that I have lived to see hedges of heliotrope, of geraniums and calla-lilies. I remember, in contrast, solitary calla plants that I have nursed with care all winter in hopes of one blossom for Easter. And I do not feel sure that I can ever tear myself away. I am reminded of good old Dr. Watts, who was invited by Lady Abney to pass a fortnight at her home, and remained for forty years.
Here we all unconsciously eat the lotus in some occult fashion, are straightway bewitched and held willing captives. I have looked up the lotus, about which so much is said or sung and so little definitely known, and find it is a prickly shrub of Africa, bearing a fruit of a sweet taste, and the early Greeks knew all about its power. Homer in the Odyssey says that whoever ate of the fruit wished never to depart nor again to see his native land. Many of Ulysses’ sailors ate this fruit, and lost all desire for home.
The last letter received by me from New Hampshire, April 3d, begins in this way: “It is like the middle of winter here, good sleighing and still very cold.” And then comes a sad series of announcements of sickness and deaths caused by the protracted rigors of the season. And here, at the same date, all the glories of the spring, which far exceeds our summer—Spanish breezes, Italian sky and sunsets, Alpine mountains, tropical luxuriance of vegetation, a nearly uniform climate, a big outdoor conservatory. There is no other place on earth that combines so much in the same limits. You can snowball your companions on Christmas morning on the mountain-top, pelt your lady friends with rose leaves in the foothills three hours later, and in another sixty minutes dip in the surf no cooler than Newport in July; and the theatre in the evening. As a bright workman said, you can freeze through and thaw out in one day.
An electric railroad will soon connect Los Angeles with Pasadena and Mount Wilson, and a fine hotel is to be placed on the top of Echo Mountain, 3500 feet high, and this will then certainly be the ideal health and pleasure resort of the world.
Pasadena’s homes, protected on three sides by mountain ranges, are surrounded by groves and gardens, trees and hedges from every clime. Everything will grow and flourish here. Capitalists from the East seem engaged in a generous rivalry to create the ideal paradise. Passion vines completely cover the arbors, roses clamber to the tops of houses and blossom by tens of thousands. I notice displays fit for a floral show in the windows of butcher shops and shoe stores. The churches are adorned with a mantle of vines and flowers.
Are there no “outs,” no defects in this Pasadena? One must not forget the rainy days, the occasional “hot spells” of August and September, a wind now and then that blows off steeples and tears down fragile structures, bringing along a good deal more sand than is wanted. And every year an earthquake may be expected. I have experienced two, and they are not agreeable.
Aside from these drawbacks and dust in summer, all else is perfection, except that the weather is so uniformly glorious that there is seldom a day when one is willing to stay at home. I feel just now like a “deestrick” schoolboy who has been “kept in” on a summer afternoon.
The wildflowers are more fascinating to me than all those so profusely cultivated. I weary of five thousand calla-lilies in one church at Easter, and lose a little interest in roses when they bloom perennially and in such profusion that I have had enough given me in one morning to fill a wash-tub or clothes-basket!
The wealth of color on the hills and mesas in springtime can never be described or painted. The State flower, the yellow poppy with the name that would floor any spelling-match hero—the eschscholtzia—is most conspicuous, and can be seen far away at sea; but there are dozens of others, that it is better to admire and leave unplucked, as they wilt so soon. “The ground is literally dolly-vardened with buttercups, violets, dodecatheons, gilias, nemophilas, and the like. And yet these are the mere skirmish line of the mighty invading hosts, whose uniforms surpass the kingly robes of Solomon, and whose banners of crimson and yellow and purple will soon wave on every hilltop and in every valley.
“In April and May the lover of nature may pass into the seventh heaven of botanical delight. Then in favored sections the display reaches a gorgeousness and a profusion that surpass both description and imagination.”
No one can paint the grain fields as they look when the sun puts into every blade a tiny golden ray and it is no longer every-day common grain, but an enchanted carpet of living, radiant, golden green. We tourists call it grass, but there is no grass to be proud of in California.
No one can paint the sky; no one would accept it as true to nature if once caught on the canvas.
I will not attempt to describe the mountains with their many charms. I listened to a lecture lately where a man was struggling to do this, and it was positively painful. The flowery verbiage, the accumulated adjectives, the poetical quotations were overpowering. I seemed actually sinking into luscious mellifluousness. I shook it off my fingers, as if it were maple syrup. Then, as he climbed higher and higher, on and up, never getting away from the richest verdure and the sweetest flowers, scenes for an artist to paint with rapture, and a poet to sing in ecstasy, I found myself pushing up my forehead to improvise a mansard roof for my brain to swell in sympathy. And when he reached the summit and the panorama burst upon his enraptured vision, it was too much for my strained emotions, and I quietly slipped out.
And the strangest part is that every word is true, and, say what one will, one never gets near the reality. In this respect, you see, it differs from a floral catalogue sent out in early spring, or a hotel pamphlet with illustrations.
The cable road is 3000 feet long, with a direct ascent of 1400 feet, and the Echo Mountain House will be 1500 feet higher than the Catskill hotels overlooking the Hudson, and it is estimated that not less than 60,000 fares will be collected upon this mountain railroad the first year.
All this was designed and executed by Professor Lowe, of aeronaut fame, a scientist and banker, the inventor of water-gas and artificial ice, and a man of great business ability.
One of the best proofs of the health-giving power of this air is the fact that the physicians practising here, with
