Front matter (continued 2)

There was a halo lingering about the dome of the old Mission Church, in the distance; its cross was glorified just before the sun rested its disk upon the ocean. The hard outlines of the mountains softened, and took on a purple hue; the white doves came down out of the clouds, and clustered about the gables; a light flickered like a fire-fly in the light-house half a league beyond the church, and another from a window of the farm-house near by. That skipper, wide off, may take his bearings from the light on the shore. But at night-fall, the wide-spreading roof is more hospitable that even this branching madrono. And there is no philosophy that could not be improved by June butter, redolent of white clover, with a supplement of cream half an inch thick.

A DAY ON THE LOS GATOS.

A DAY ON THE LOS GATOS.

The brightest stream which bubbles out of the mountains in the Coast Range, and loses itself on the plains of Santa Clara, ought to have had a more poetical name. Its feline etymology is probably owing to the fact that as many wild cats rendezvous about its headwaters as are congregated within the same limits in any place on these mountain-slopes. This superabundance of savage life, which so incontinently runs to white teeth and claws, is an indication that there is much game in this region. Pussy likes a good bill of fare, and makes it up of hares, cotton-tail rabbits, ground-squirrels, quails, doves, and a great number of singing birds, not omitting an occasional rattlesnake, which is killed so deftly that there is no chance for a venomous bite. If the unlovely creatures had been more industrious in this line, the thrushes would have had a better chance, and that dry, reedy sound in the brush—the one drawback to the pleasure of crawling on all-fours through the chaparral—would not have started a cold chill along the spine quite so often.

That little square-looking dog, loaned by a settler at the foot of the mountain, with his ears split in a dozen places in his encounters with these animals, goes along for the fun and excitement of another clinch with his old enemy. The warfare is, after all, conducted on scientific principles. The wild cat is as strong as a young tiger, and you see by the depth of the shoulders and the size of the head, that he will fight terribly. He does not run well, and cannot catch a hare in any other way than by stealth. The dog runs him to a tree; the cat ascends to the highest strong limb, goes out on that, and gets an adjustment by which the smallest possible mark will be presented for a rifle or pistol-shot. If you want to do the handsome thing, let the head alone; for that is well defended by the limb on which it is resting. The wind blowing strong at an oblique angle to your line, will make a difference of at least an inch in sending that light ball 180 feet; it will also drop from a right ascending line nearly two inches. Remember, a shrewd woodsman never forgets these things. Getting your margin adjusted, plant the ball into the shoulder, just under the spine. He will drop from the tree with only one foreleg in fighting condition. The dog is on his back in a second, and there will be the liveliest rough-and-tumble fight you have seen in many a day. Never mind the wild screams that echo from the canyon. That fellow's time has come. He will not steal your best game-chicken out of the top of the tree again.

The dog has won the battle; but he has got some ugly scars along his sides and flank. Observe that, overheated as he is, he does not rush into that clear stream. He takes his bath in that shallow spring with a soft mud bottom. Note how he plasters himself, laying the wounded side underneath, and then, setting down on his haunches, buries all the wounded parts in the ooze. The mud has medicinal properties. The dog knows it. No physician could make so good a poultice for the wounds of a cat's claws as this dog has made for himself. Pray, if you had been clawed in that way by either feline or feminine, would you have found anything at the bottom of your book philosophy so remedial as this dog has found.

Now that this striped rascal has had his light put out, it is hard to justify the act after all. He was a thief, stealthy, cowardly, blood-loving, and cruel. But then his education had been neglected. And while his moral sentiments had been lapsing for generations, note what a gain there has been in his animal development; for he is next of kin to the common house-cat. You cannot upset this theory by pointing to his abbreviated tail. How long do you suppose it is since every one of your hair-splitting casuists had a tail more than twice as long as this fellow, whose descendants, in two generations more, may have none at all? Taking him up by his enormous jowls, rounding off a head suggesting diabolical acquisitiveness, it is only necessary to carry a Darwinian rush-light in the other hand to go straight to the right man and say: Here is a link in your chain of development, only three removes from the point you have reached. What a pity that this diminution of tail and claws does not signify a corresponding decrease of cruel and stealthy circumvention! You wag your tail approvingly to this proposition, Samson. But this business of exterminating pests had better cease. Because, if carried out honestly, it would be inconvenient to some thousands of men and women who are just now cumbering the world to no purpose. It goes against the grain mightily to admit that a wild cat might ever become an angel; but if there is any obscure law tending to such a result, it is better to interfere with it as little as possible. If both moral and physical perfectibility are only a question of time, the fellow who sells his fiery potations close by that sweet mountain spring, and is never conscious of its perpetual rebuke, ought to have a margin, at least, of five million years.

There is a cleft in the mountain, about ten miles to the southwest of Santa Clara. That engineering was done by the Los Gatos. Entering this defile, the stage road winds along the mountain side for six or seven miles, and then turns to the right and goes down the mountain slope to Santa Cruz. But as long as there are any stage roads in sight, or signs of abrading wheels, you will find no trout. Turning to the left and following the ridge, at the height of about two thousand feet, a walk of three or four miles brings one to a point where civilization runs out with the disappearance of the last trail. That mountain lifting its dark crest so kingly into the clouds, is Loma Prieta, the highest crest of the Coast Range. On the north side of that intervening slope, and nearly a thousand feet higher, you will find the source of the Los Gatos. It is six miles away. There a great fountain bubbles out of the mountain side, and the stream, clear and strong, and singing for very joy, goes bounding on to the gorges below. The upper stream has never been defiled by sawdust; and no lout in shining boots ever went up to its head. It is best to go into camp here and take a fresh start the next morning. In the early dawn—before the sun glares on the land and sea—town and hamlet, valley and mountain, have a morning glory, which it were better not to miss. Looking oceanward, the fir and the redwood send up their spires of eternal green from all the valleys. At midnight, the full moon was flooding all the mountain top with light, and was apparently shining upon the still ocean, which had come quite to the base of the mountain. The fog had come in during the night, but hugged the earth so closely that every hillock appeared like an island resting on the calm, white sea. All night long the moon shone on this upper stratum, revealing with wonderful distinctness the tops of the tallest redwoods, while the trunks appeared to be submerged. It was not easy to dispel the illusion that one with a skiff might have paddled from wooded islet to another, treading a thousand intricate channels, drifting past the homes of strange peoples, whose lives were symbolized by this serene and silent sea. But the illusion would not hold water, when, at early dawn, a clumsy two-horse wagon went lumbering down the mountain and disappeared under this white stratum. When the sun came up, all the ragged and fleecy edges rolled in upon the center, and there was a silent seaward march, until at mid-day the fog banked up with perpendicular walls, about a dozen miles from the land. A little farther down the valley the trees were dripping with the moisture of this migratory ocean. But not a drop was collected on the glistening leaves of the madrono which gave us friendly shelter that night. It was a good place enough to sleep; but if one is to take an observation every half-hour during the night, he will have no difficulty in getting up at the call of the birds.

The first sound heard in the morning was the yelp of a miserable coyote. The intrusive rascal had pitched his key in advance of thrush, or lark, or robin. It was easy enough to silence him with a shotgun; but as the birds, also, would have been frightened into silence, this ill-favored vagabond was moderated by pitching two stones at him, with no other result than securing a lame shoulder for a week. The thing was entirely overdone; and if the fellow had any perception of the ridiculous, he went into his hole and laughed for the space of half an hour.

The altitude was too great for the home of robin and linnet. But the woodpeckers went screaming by, and the shy yellow-hammers flitted noiselessly from tree to tree; while, in the thicket, the cock quails were calling out the coveys for an early breakfast. Two deer had come down the mountain slope, and finally halted at half rifle-shot, looking stupidly at the camp-fire. If they understood the statute made in their behalf, they were perfectly safe. But Samson, who had stood for three minutes with one fore-leg raised in an intensely dramatic way, made a spring at last, and, without warrant of law, ran them down the canyon; and ten minutes later they were seen going up the opposite slope, but with many redundant antics, indicating contempt for the cur which had sought to worry them. Later in the day three or four more were seen, and one half-grown fawn was following the roe, the latter finally taking the wind and bounding off handsomely, while the fawn, less keen of scent, turned about and looked inquiringly, without any clear perception of danger. It was evident that so long as the fawn depends upon the mother for protection, it has not a very keen scent nor a quick apprehension of approaching danger. These are only perfected later, when the fawn is left to care for itself. The cub is very foolish; the young fox has no more of cunning than a common puppy; and a young ground-squirrel, in time of danger, rashly bobs his head out of the hole long before his venerable parents venture to take an observation. We might have had a smoking haunch of venison that morning, but it would have lacked that fine moral quality which the game law withheld. If you want to know the terrible power of temptation, breakfast on bacon when two deer are within rifle-shot.

It took not less than three hours to work through the interminable thickets, and to climb over the rocks, and gain a place for the first cast of a line. These mountain trout strike quick or not at all. There is a delicious, tingling sensation when the fellows jump from the eddies and swirls more than a foot out of water. You need not spit on your bait for luck, when the fish are breaking water for the hook, and the dark pools are alive with them; not very large, but with keen mountain appetites, having the brightest colors, hard of flesh, and gamy. Well, yes, here is where the fun comes in, after crawling for more than two miles through the brush, and over jagged rocks. Not the least of it is to observe that H—— has gone daft from over-excitement, and is throwing his fish into the tree-tops. What with the moon shining on his face last night, the deer coming down to tantalize him, and these mountain trout jumping wild for the hook, there is just as much lunacy as it is safe to encounter at this altitude.

The stream holds out well, and has not perceptibly diminished in a linear ascent of the mountain-side of nearly three miles. A never-failing reservoir, at an altitude of perhaps twenty-three hundred feet, creates the main branch; while lower down there is a constant augmentation from runnels, up some of which the trout find their way. It is best not to slight these little branches; for occasionally the water sinks, running underground for awhile, and then reappearing, so that a succession of pools is formed, which arrest the fish; and, having nothing to eat, they prey upon each other, until rarely more than two or three remain, and sometimes a solitary fish is left—he having ate up all his poor relations, and thus supplied their wants and his own. There is nothing very strange in this piscatory economy, after all. That bald-headed man, who lost his balance, and slid down a shelving rock nearly twenty feet into the pool, and went out on the other side, with a solitary fish dangling at his hook, and a most unearthly yell, is playing the same game in a business pool. There are more in it than can possibly succeed. One by one, he will eat up the others and become a millionaire. If a bigger fish in the pool eats him, it is only a slight variation of chances, which the commercial ethics of the times will just as heartily approve. You have made that pool desolate; but it is not necessary to yell so as to disturb the universe over a half-pound trout. If ever, O friend, you should have the luck to be drawn out of a pool thus, will there be no yelling in the subterranean caverns?

There is no heroism in jerking every fish out of the stream, just because they have keen mountain appetites. Moreover, as the rays of the sun become vertical, light is thrown into the pools and eddies, and the bites are languid and less frequent. An hour before sunset they will be as brisk as ever. But a hundred trout are enough for one morning, and too many, since no one is willing to carry them down the mountain. A year ago, an enthusiastic friend found the headwaters of the Butano, just over the ridge, toward the coast. Having cut his way out of the San Lorenzo Valley, making his own trail for seven miles or more, he cast in his hook where, he stoutly affirmed, no fisherman had ever preceded him. The falls in several places have formed deep basins in the soft, white sandstone. There this enthusiastic fisherman found his heaven for two hours, until night began to close in upon him. Did he go into a tree-top for the night, and pull his two hundred trout up after him? No; but he left them in a heap, and crept down the mountain at dusk, his pace quickened a little by the sight of a fresh bear-track. I do not think an honest bear, made fully acquainted with such sacrilegious conduct, would eat a man, or so much as smell of him.

All day long the perspective has been growing broader and richer, until these diminutive little fish, destined to be swallowed with a single snap of the jaws—even as they sought to snap the wriggling worm—have become a minor incident in the crowding events of the day. For an hour after dawn the only outlook was into the Santa Clara Valley. But the morning was cold; the thin gray smoke went up silently into the heavens from here and there a farm-house; across the valley a low column of mist clung to the foothills and rolled sullenly away. The rank vegetation of early spring, broken occasionally by the plowed fields, had all the abruptness of contrast seen in the patchwork of a bedquilt; and in the chill of the dawn was not a whit more pleasing to the eyes. But an hour later the sunlight filled all the valley; the harsher tints of the morning were melted into the more subdued glory of the spring, and one could fancy that the scent of almond blossoms came up the mountain, mingled with the grosser incense of the mold and tilth of many fields. Even the solitary stunted pine far up the mountain was dropping down its leafy spicula, like javelins cast aslant, and the last year's cones fell with a rattle, like hand grenades cast from some overhanging battlement. Life was crowding death even here, and the pine was freshening its foliage, as certain of spring time as the alder just shaking out its tassels by the river bank. Away to the southwest the Bay of Monterey, with its breadth of twenty miles, was reduced to a little patch of blue water; and wide off there was a faint trail of smoke along the horizon—the sign that a steamer was going down the coast for puncheons of wine and fleeces of wool.

The glass reveals the dome of a church at Santa Cruz, looking a little larger than a bird cage set down by the ocean. The famous picture on the ceiling of the old adobe church disappeared when the storms melted down the mud walls. If the perspective was faulty, the picture had a lively moral for bad Indians. But something better was found, not many years ago (so the village tradition runs), in one of the lofts in an old store-room near by. The Padre going up there with the village sign painter, to hunt for some half-forgotten thing, drew out of the lumber a lot of blurred and musty canvas, giving it to his friend. The latter hastened home and, unrolling his canvas, saw that upon one side there had once been a picture. But the pigment was now only powdered atoms, which a feather would sweep away. Oiling a new canvas, he laid it upon the back of the picture, and the oil striking through, the first process of restoration was safely accomplished. Then the surface of the picture was carefully cleaned. The sign painter quietly hung up his picture, satisfied that there was an infinite distance between it and a common daub. The Padre wanted the picture back after this sudden revelation of its wonderful beauty. But it never was transferred again to the old lumber room.

"What became of the Padre?"

"I think he went to heaven, where he found better pictures than were ever fished out of that old lumber room."

"And the sign painter?"

"Did you ever know a man who had a Murillo, or even thought he had one, who was in a hurry to leave this world?"

SHADOWS OF ST. HELENA.

SHADOWS OF ST. HELENA.

Whether in the Russian River Valley, Napa, or the smaller valleys of the Clear Lake country, St. Helena is in such friendly proximity that all sense of isolation is destroyed. Looking toward the south from its shoulder, there was an endless succession of stubblefields and vineyards; the faint clatter of threshing machines could be heard; sacks of wheat stood bolt upright in the fields, like millers in convention. A train of cars, diminished by the long perspective, was creeping with serpentine undulations up the valley, and trailing a thin vapor against the sky. Farther south was the bay; white sails of little schooners, outlined by the glass, appeared to split the salt meadows open, as they crept toward the little town of Napa. St. Helena was grandly lifted up on that autumnal morning, and all the little mountains seemed to be rendering homage to the king.

There is no country under the sun where a vineyard is more picturesque than here. If there were an interminable perspective of green clothing and coloring all the hillsides, there would be no fitting border for the picture. But when there is not a fresh blade of grass by the wayside, and the tawny hills touch the yellow stubble-fields, we have a broad golden frame for some picture which ought to be worthy of it. And what more so than a sixty-acre vineyard, set within this mitred framework of mountains? The border is a very generous one, certainly—five or six miles of slope on either side, and this square of emerald in the centre. It is all worked in with true artistic effect, except those straight lines of vines, crossing at right angles. A poet or a painter, setting this vineyard, would have curved the lines, or secured an orderly disorder—enough, at least, to have destroyed the association with a schoolboy's rule and plummet.

Observe that the vines are not tied to clumsy, stiff stakes; nor are the leaves plucked off in part, to prevent mildew. The runners reach out and interlace, resting gently on the ground. The leaves droop a little in the hot sun, making a complete canopy for the clusters, the largest of which rest on the ground. How much more fitting this growing revelation—this discovery, step by step, of hidden clusters—than to see all this wealth at once, as one might do if the vines were trained bolt upright, and held in bondage by stakes!

Another notable effect is produced by the twenty or more varieties, differing in the shape of the leaf and in the color and flavor of the grape. The Tokay blushes by the side of the blackest Malvoisie. The Muscatel is pale where the Victoria has as much color as a ruddy English girl. The Muscats have a tinge of gold, in fine contrast with the Rose of Peru, whose regal purple deepens with every midday sun.

Three months hence, this border of gold will all be changed to the rank and riotous green of pastures quickened by the vernal rains—this square setting, as of emerald, stripped of every leaf and every cluster, but the bronzed vines still interlacing and toning the landscape into a mellow ripeness. A month later, the merciless pruning-knife has left only the black stub, a foot above the ground, and two or three "eyes" for the new wood. This amputated vineyard, with its limbs burning by the wayside, suggests enough of prosy realism to neutralize all the sentiment which it can inspire on a hot September day.

Will the juice of these grapes enrich the blood, and add any essential quality to the tone and fibre of a race which is giving so many signs of physical decadence? This conglomerate which you call society is hanging out a great many flags of distress. It babbles incoherently of perfectibility, and goes straightway to the bad. Are these reformers going to save the world, who, either through intemperance of speech or drink, must needs be moderated by a padlock put upon their mouths? Nor is it safe, just now, to calculate the results of this feminine gospel of vituperation. The back of the body politic may be the better for having a political fly blister laid on; and it might, perhaps, as well be done by feminine hands as any other. But there are some evils too deep for surface remedies. If, for instance, vineyards are going to curse the people, as my moralizing friend insists, then humanity hereabout is in a bad way. Why, a little generous wine ought to enrich the blood and inspire nobility of thought. If it does more than this—if it becomes a demon to drive men and hogs into the sea—then it is evident that both were on too low a plane of existence for any safe exaltation. But shall the vineyards be rooted up, for all this? It is better to drown the swine, and let the grapes still grow purple upon the hillsides.

Some day these mountains will be wreathed and festooned with vines. One may see this culture now climbing to their tops. Oh, my friend, with thin and impoverished blood! do not pinch this question up in the vise of your morality. No doubt there was a vineyard in Eden, and there were ripe clusters close by the fig-leaves. You cannot prove to me that sinless hands have not plucked the grapes, and that millions will not do it again. What we need is not a greater company of wailing prophets, but men who will reveal to us the higher and nobler use of things. If one could not live comfortably in this Vale of Paradise and ripen from year to year, opening his soul to all enriching influences, without an everlasting protest, there would be small chance for his comfort in any more etherealized place.

Looking northward, or from the back side of St. Helena, is Lake County, the centre of which can be reached by the daylight of a summer day from San Francisco. It is a wild, isolated and mountainous region, containing a harmless population, who are much addicted to salt pork, and needing all the more, perhaps, the medicinal and renovating qualities of the various thermal springs which abound. A Pike, with the wilderness at his back, and civilization advancing in front, is sometimes a ridiculous, and oftener a pitiable, specimen of humanity. When the schoolhouse overtakes him, there is a crisis in his affairs. He must elect to hustle half a score of frowzy-headed children into his covered wagon, hang a few pots and kettles at the rear, and plunge farther into the wilderness, or let civilization go past him, closing in upon all sides, and, in spite of impotent protests, narrowing perhaps his own horizon, but making it broader and brighter for his children. If the horizon is too bright, this blinking Pike will turn his back to the light, and make a break for Egypt. So long as there is bacon and hominy, and free territory, with a modicum of whisky within easy reach, you cannot summon this stolid, retreating animal to a better condition. Nature has made a botch of him, else he would now be running on four feet, instead of two. A border man, running away from civilization, who cannot bark and burrow like a coyote, nor climb a tree like a gorilla, is wrestling with his fate at a terrible disadvantage.

If you have never seen Clear Lake, do not babble about Como and Geneva. Here are eighty square miles of water, lifted fifteen hundred feet above the sea, and encompassed by mountains whose flaming forges were put out but yesterday—if a thousand years may be taken as one day. One may see Clear Lake from the top of St. Helena, twenty miles distant, on a bright day. We saw it first from Lukonoma—an intervening mountain, about fifteen hundred feet high—a ribbon of blue water, stretching away between the hills, with a solitary white sail, recognized only by bringing a tree in the range. There was the droning of the pines in the mountain-tops in the afternoon trade-wind; a broad valley opening to the south, which swallowed up two or three mountain streams, and then opened its ugly adobe lips for more; smaller valleys toward the north, encircled with tall firs, and the slumberous dome of Uncle Sam, lifting itself up grandly three or four thousand feet hard by the lake.

Along this Lukonoma ridge there is a well-defined Indian trail for miles. The Clear Lake Indians were accustomed to exchange visits with a tribe in the Lukonoma Valley, ten miles below. The tops of the highest mountain ridges were selected for trails, rather than the valley. The Indian does not like to be surprised, even by his friends. Along these ridges he could look off on either side, and a long way ahead. If not molested, he might drop down to the hot springs just at the base of the mountain, take a mud bath to make his joints a little more supple, and if he found an ant's nest to add to his dietary stores, so much the better. You need not overhaul the Indian's cookbook. He ate the ants alive. No shrimp-eater ought to quarrel with him on that score.

We shall have a nearer view of Lower Lake another day. It is better to have the first view of some old and famous city from the hill-tops. That revelation ripens into a picture which ever afterward we hasten to set over against the squalor and ugliness disclosed by a nearer view. One need not be wholly disgusted if in place of a trout, he has caught a mud-turtle from the lake which opened its sheen of waters to him first from the mountain summit.

The shadows had stretched nearly across the narrow valleys, when it occurred to us that, in climbing to the highest and baldest peak, the Indian trail had run out, and that the hot springs—the point of departure—were eight miles distant, and were shut out of view by an intervening spur. Either a short cut was to be made, trusting to luck to find a trail, or there was to be a night on the mountain. There were two intervening canyons to be crossed before there was any prospect of striking a trail. It is not pleasant to slide a horse on his haunches down into one of these chasms without knowing where one is to bring up. If the most obscure cattle trail can be found leading in, one may trust to the instincts of horse sense to find it, and also the one which will most certainly lead out on the other side. The tinkling of a cow-bell on the table-lands beyond was a welcome sound. The horses wound into the first canyon, and went out without much hesitation. The trail for the next, by good luck, had been found. But it was a suspicious circumstance that these ponies—accustomed to such defiles, and now heading for home—hesitated, snuffed, snorted and turned about. The rein was given to them, but, hungry as they were, they seemed disposed to turn back. The little Cayuse pony trembled, threw his ears forward, advanced and retreated, and blew out a column of vapor from each nostril as he kept up his aboriginal snort. Either two tired and hungry excursionists must make a night of it, shut in by a canyon in front and in the rear, or the second one must be crossed without delay.

A horse is generally willing to plant his feet where he sees a man do it in advance. But these horses were dragged into the chasm, sometimes dropping on their haunches, and at other times plowing along with the fore feet braced well ahead. Once at the bottom, a fresh cinch was taken with the greatest difficulty, as neither horse could be kept still for a second. A moment afterward the click of the pony's feet was heard, and the sparks thrown off by his shoes were distinct enough as he shot up the trail as though projected from a mortar. The old horse—stiff in the shoulders, and his legs like crowbars—was not a rod behind him.

"Did you see anything in that canyon?"

"No—yes. I saw the outline of a steer going down to drink."

"Nonsense! Do you think these tired horses, refusing first to come into the canyon, would have gone out on the other side as if Satan were after them, if they did not know that that particular steer had claws. If you had seen twenty mules break out of a yard and stampede when the foot of a cinnamon bear was thrown over, you would not blame these horses for blazing the trail with fire as they thundered up the rocks with the fresh scent of a live grizzly in their nostrils.

"Then, if you are willing to take the affidavits of these two horses as to the facts—and the jurat of eight steel-clad hoofs, striking fire on the rocks, was a very solemn one—you can settle the question in favor of the grizzly much more comfortably than he would have settled it for you. It is not necessary that one's scalp should be pulled over his eyes and his face set awry for life, in order to obtain a more convincing demonstration. I can refer you to a settler who has had these things done for him, whereat his satisfaction has in no whit increased."

An hour afterward two horses with drooping heads went into their stalls, and two jaded excursionists had each dropped into hot baths at Harbin's Springs. Nothing externally will neutralize the chill of a night ride among the mountains better than water which spouts from this hillside heated to 110 degrees. It is a notable caprice of Nature that, of three springs within the space of twenty feet, one is cold and has no mineral qualities; the other two are of about the same temperature, the waters of one strongly impregnated with iron and the other with sulphur. The waters of the two mineral springs combined are not only as hot as a strong man can bear, but they dissolve zinc bath-tubs, which was a satisfactory reason for the substitution of ugly wooden bathing-boxes. It is a pleasant nook, grandly encircled with mountains, with the wonderfully blue heavens by day, and lustrous stars by night.

Fifty or sixty moping invalids made up the assortment at the hotel. These taciturn and moody people did not wait for the angel to go down and trouble the waters, but each went in his own way and time, and troubled the waters mightily on his personal account. The fact may be assumed that the angel had been there in advance. For a thousand years, a great subterranean caldron had been heated, tempered and medicated, and its vapors had ascended as incense toward heaven.

This little sanitarium among the mountains, crowded with curious people—angular, petulant and capricious—was invested with a great peace and restfulness for brain-weary folk. When the sun went down, invalids, like children, went off to bed. There was nothing to do but to sleep through the long cool nights. All the conventionalities of a more artificial social life were reversed. The people who had fought Nature and common sense for years, and had been worsted in the conflict, came here to make their peace with her. They were up with the opening of the day. They drank medicated waters heroically; dropped into hot baths with a sensation akin to have fallen on the points of a million needles; plunged into pools, or were immersed with the vapors collected in close rooms. There were early breakfasts, when the boards were swept by invalids with ravenous appetites; dinners at midday, attended by the same hungry, silent, introspective people; supper, before sundown, when the same famishing people were eating away for dear life. A four-horse passenger wagon arrived just at nightfall, bringing the mail and an occasional guest. There was a glance at the newspapers, now and then a letter was read, and then night and a sweet stillness settled over this mountain dell. Time was of little consequence; people searched an old almanac for the day of the week or month; the sun rose above the crest of one mountain and went down behind another; there were the morning and evening shadows, the same flood of light in the valley at midday, the monotonous drone of the little rivulet in the canyon, and at long intervals the twitter of a solitary bird. Some sauntered along trails, counting the steps with a sort of mental vacuity; others tilted their chairs under porches, and slept with hats over their eyes. If a bustling, loud-voiced guest arrived, in a day or two he fell into the same peaceful and subdued ways. The repose of sky and mountain came down gently upon him, and a dreamy indolence shortened his steps and prolonged his afternoon naps.

There would have been an utter stagnation of life but for the advent of one of those characters who had been everywhere, seen everybody, and had become a sort of itinerating museum of odd conceits and grotesque incidents. There were many invalids who had separated themselves from business cares, only to brood over their infirmities. They wanted nothing so much as, in some way, to be led apart from their own morbid natures. The eccentric little man told his stories. They were not always fresh, nor always extremely witty. But, as the assortment never ran out, and the quality improved from day to day, the fact was alike creditable to his inventive powers and his benevolence. At first, the worst specimens of morbid anatomy listened from a distance, and muttered, "Foolish;" "Don't believe a word of it." The next day they hitched their chairs along a few feet nearer to this story-telling evangel. One could occasionally see that a crisis was coming; either these people must laugh, or be put on the list of hopeless incurables. Observing, on one occasion, a man on crutches who, after listening for a time with apparent contempt, suddenly withdrew and hobbled off around a turn of the narrow road, I ventured to ask him if stories were disagreeable to him.

"Oh, no, that is not it. You see I had not laughed in years. I was determined that old Hooker should not make me laugh, if I did not choose to. The fact is, I had either to holler or die. I wouldn't make a fool of myself, and so I went around the bend in the road, and turned off into the chaparral."

As this man dropped one crutch in a week from that time, and in ten days thereafter was walking with a cane, I have never doubted that he "hollered."

At nightfall generous wood fires glowed upon the hearth of the sitting room, and there was a more hopeful light in many faces. People lingered in the doorway, on the stairs, and leaned over the balustrade for one more story from the genial and eccentric man. A ripple of half-suppressed laughter went around the room, ran up the stair-way, and ended in gentle gurgles in the rooms with open doors at the end of the corridor. The man of anecdote and story had touched, with healing influences, maladies which no medicated waters could reach. He exorcised the demons so gently, that these brooding invalids hardly knew how they were rescued. New and marvelous virtues were thereafter found in the spring water; there was a softer sunlight in the dell; the man with the liver complaint became less sallow, and no longer talked spitefully about "Old Hooker"; and the woman who did not expect to live a week, no longer sent down petulant requests that the house might be still, but only wanted that last story repeated to her "just as he told it."

Once, as the twilight drew on, the face of Hooker seemed to glow with unwonted radiance, as he unfolded his plans for a sanitary retreat. His theory was, that civilization had culminated in mental disorders, and the world was running mad with excitements, which half-demented people were busy in fomenting. Of the sixty guests at the Springs, he estimated that, at one time, not more than seven per cent. were free from some sort of a delusion—the evidence of lunacy in its milder forms. If put into strait-jackets, or shut up in the wards of an hospital, or treated otherwise as if insane, they would become as mad as Bedlam. One delusion must be matched against another. Every man and woman must be treated as sane, and all that they did, or thought, or said, as the perfection of reason. The nonsense of clowns had cured more people than the wisdom of philosophers. The chemistry of Nature, the sunshine, the pure mountain air, and all the subtle combinations of thaumaturgic springs must be supplemented by every art which could beguile and lead people away from a miserable self-consciousness. A half-hour of sound sleep is sometimes the bridge over the gulf from death to life. He would not only make people sleep, but even laugh in their sleep. He would practice the highest arts of a sanitary magician. His patients should laugh by night and by day. They should forget themselves. The time would come when the best story-teller would be accounted the best physician.

On the evening before leaving the Springs, two hunters, in clay-colored clothes, deposited upon the porch each a deer and a string of mountain trout. Hooker, of blessed memory, after whispering confidentially the bill of fare for an early breakfast, went aside and talked in an undertone with the hunters, who soon afterward disappeared in the direction of the canyon we had crossed a few evenings before. The moon being nearly at full, there would be a good prospect for deer during the latter part of the night; but there was a possible hint of larger game, in the chuckling undertone of one of the hunters as he shouldered his rifle: "Fellers as wear them kind o' clothes don't know a bar when they see him."

In the early morning, the same hunters were warming their fingers by the wood fire in the sitting-room. Hooker was already up, and flitted about—now conferring with the hunters, and then with the steward. A game breakfast was already assured. Hooker whispered that the hunters had found the bear which sent the ponies flying out of the canyon. He had been taken alive, and we should have a parting look at him in advance of the other guests as we drove down the road. A Pike, astride of the corral fence, saluted Hooker as we were climbing to the top rail: "Glad you 'uns found old corn-cracker up the gulch. He was powerful weak when I turned him out. He's a good 'un."

One glance at his long, yellow tusks and bristling back was enough. There was a sudden snap of the whip, and the dust spun from the wheels as two horses shot down the road on a bright October morning. The little dell, with its thermal springs, its colony of invalids, Hooker, the incorrigible, and the "bear" in the corral, disappeared with a gentle benediction.

One may traverse a thousand miles of the Coast Range, and not find another mountain road which reveals, at every turn, so many striking views as the one of twenty miles from Harbin's to Calistoga. The road, for a considerable distance, follows the windings of a noisy and riotous little rivulet, which, heading on the easterly side of St. Helena, runs obstinately due north for several miles. The fringe of oaks and madronos were wonderfully fresh, as they stood half in sunlight and half in shadow, still dripping, here and there, with the moisture which had been condensed during the night. A delegation of robins had come down from higher latitudes, and were taking an early and cheery breakfast from the scarlet berries of the madrono. It needed but the flaming maple and falling chestnuts, with some prospect of "shell-barks," to round into perfect fullness these autumnal glories. But no one living east of the Hudson could raise such a wild and unearthly yell as broke from the Judge every time a cotton-tail rabbit darted across the road. The obstreperous woodpecker was awed into silence, and the more industrious ones dropped in amazement the acorns which they were tapping into the trunks of the trees, and flitted silently away.

"That," said the Judge, "is not half as loud as I heard Hooker yell six months ago."

"Then he was demented?"

"Yes; he was as mad as a March hare, and in a strait-jacket at that."

"That clears up one or two mysteries. But you might have made the revelation before."

"When are you going to start that hilarious institution which you and Hooker called a sanitarium?"

Just then, the summit of the mountain road had been gained, and the long perspective of the Napa Valley opened at the base of St. Helena, and melted away toward the south into the soft, dreamy atmosphere of an autumnal noonday.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL.

A country without grandmothers and old houses needs a great many balancing compensations. Everywhere one is confronted with staring new houses, which require an external ripening in the wind and sun for half a century. If the motherly wisdom of seventy-five years is lodged therein, it is something of recent importation. I have walked two miles to see an old lady, who not only bears this transplanting well, but is as fresh and winsome in thought as a girl of sixteen. If only there had been an old house, a stone fire-place—wide at the jambs—and a low, receding roof in the rear, with a bulging second story and oaken beams, nothing more would have been wanting.

When, therefore, it was whispered, one day, that there was an old house in the middle of a large lot on a hill, overlooking the Golden Gate, there was a strong and unaccountable desire to take possession of it immediately. But when the fact was stated that the house was ten years old, that there was moss upon the shingles, low ceilings within, and a low roof without, the destiny of that house was well nigh settled. The owner wanted money much more than old houses. In fact, a Californian who refuses to sell anything, except his wife, is only found after long intervals. The transfer of ownership was natural enough. It followed that one evening there was a dreamy consciousness that we were the owner of a small, rusty-looking cottage, set down in the middle of an acre lot, defined by dilapidated fences, and further ornamented by such stumps of trees as had been left after all the stray cattle of the neighborhood had browsed them at will. As incidents of the transfer, there was the Golden Gate, with the sun dropping into the ocean beyond; the purple hills; the sweep of the bay for fifteen miles, on which a white sail could be seen, here and there; and, later, the long rows of flickering street lamps, revealing the cleft avenues of the great city dipping toward the water on the opposite side of the bay.

Consider what an investment accompanies these muniments of title. It is not an acre lot and an old house merely, with several last year's birds' nests and a vagrant cat, but the ownership extends ninety-five millions of miles toward the zenith, and indefinitely toward the nadir. No one can, in miners' parlance, get an extension above or below. It is a square acre, bounded by heaven and hades.

If my neighbor builds an ugly house, why should I find fault with it, since it is the expression of his wants, and not of mine. If these are honestly expressed, he has compassed the main end of house-building. He may have produced something that nobody in the wide world will be suited with, or will ever want but himself. But if it is adapted to his wants, it is only in some remote and æsthetic way that his neighbors have anything to do with the matter. They may wish that he had not made it externally as ugly as original sin; that he had laid a heavy hand on the antics of architect and carpenter; that lightning would some day strike the "pilot-house," or some other excrescence which has been glued on to the top; and that a certain smart obtrusiveness were toned down a little to harmonize with a more correct taste. But one could not formulate these defects and send them to his neighbor without running a risk quite unwarranted by any good that might be effected.

Taking possession of an old house, its ugliness is to be redeemed, not rashly, but considerately, and in the spirit of gentleness. Its homeliness has been consecrated; its doors may have been the portals both of life and death. Possibly, some one has gone out whose memory of it in the ends of the earth will transform it into something of comeliness and beauty.

Investing an old house, the first process is to become thoroughly acquainted with it, and then, if it is to be enlarged, push it out from the center with such angles as will catch the sun, and will bring the best view within range from the windows. It will grow by expansions and accretions. You want a bed-room on the eastern side, because of the morning sun. By all means, put it there. The morning benediction which comes in at the window may temper one to better ways all the day.

No man will build a house to suit his inmost necessities, unless he proceeds independently of all modern rules of construction. Some of these are good enough, but they nearly all culminate in an ambitious externalism. The better class of dwellings erected seventy-five years ago contained broad staircases, spacious sleeping-rooms, and a living-room, where the whole family and the guests, withal, might gather at the fire-side. The house was an expression of hospitality. The host had room for friendships in his heart, and room at his hearthstone. The modern house, with its stiff angularities, narrow halls, and smart reception-rooms, expresses no idea of hospitality. It warns the stranger to deliver his message quickly, and be off. It is well adapted to small conventional hypocrisies, but you will never count the stars there by looking up the chimney.

One may search long to find the man who has not missed his aim in the matter of house-building. It is generally needful that two houses should be built as a sacrifice to sentiment, and then the third experiment may be reasonably successful. The owner will probably wander through the first two, seeking rest and finding none. His ideal dwelling is more remote than ever. There may be a wealth of gilt and stucco, and an excess of marble, which ought to be piled up in the cemetery for future use. But the house which receives one as into the very heaven—which is, from the beginning, invested with the ministries of rest, of hospitality, of peace, of that indefinable comfort which seems to converge all the goodness of the life that now is with the converging sunbeams—such a dwelling does not grow out of the first crude experiment. It will never be secured until one knows better what he really wants than an architect or carpenter can tell him.

"Did you bring the old house up to this ideal standard?" Just about as near as that pear tree, at the lower end of the garden, has been brought up to a perfect standard of fruiting. You perceive that where half of the top was cut away, and new scions inserted, the pears hung in groups and blushed in the autumnal sun. As you let one of them melt on your palate, turn to the other side of the tree, and note that, if ever a premium were offered for puckering, acrid fruit, these pears from the original stock ought to take it.

Now, if you graft your ideas on to another's, premising that his views were crude and primitive, the result will be somewhat mixed. We should say that the grafts put into that old house were tolerably satisfactory. But we counsel no friend to build over an old house, unless he owns a productive gold mine, and the bill of particulars at the end of his exploit is more interesting and gratifying to him than any modern novel.

There was, however, a shade of regret when it was announced that nothing more remained to be done. For three months there had been a series of gentle transitions, and an undercurrent of pleasurable excitement as a door appeared in a new place, a window opened here and there, stairways were cut, and old pieces pushed off and new took their places. It seemed as if these transitions ought to be always going on, and therefore the most natural thing in the world that the carpenters should always be cutting or hammering that house. They might grow old and another set take their places, but there would always be some room to enlarge, or some want growing out of the exigencies of a new day. Moreover, the first part taken in hand would in time decay or become antiquated, and why not associate builders and house together, since all the jars, wrenching of timbers, sawing and hammering had become musical, and seemed to be incorporated as the law of the house? Nothing but financial considerations prevented a contract for life with the builders, and the life-long luxury of changing an old house into a new one. There came a day at last of oppressive silence. Painters came down from their ladders; the carpenters packed up their tools and walked thoughtfully around, taking an honest view on all sides of a structure which had grown under their hands until, outwardly, there was not the slightest semblance of the old house which they took in hand some months before. There was a shade akin to sadness on the face of the master workman. Evidently the idea of ever leaving that house had overtaken him for the first time that day. He had grown with the house; or, at any rate, his children had been growing. Why should he not come back on the morrow, and plumb, hammer and saw; creeping up the ladder with every new day, and sliding down with every descending sun?

The loftiest house, and the most perfect, in the matter of architecture, I have ever seen, was that which a wood-chopper occupied with his family one winter in the forests of Santa Cruz County. It was the cavity of a redwood tree two hundred and forty feet in height. Fire had eaten away the trunk at the base, until a circular room had been formed, sixteen feet in diameter. At twenty feet or more from the ground was a knot-hole, which afforded egress for the smoke. With hammocks hung from pegs, and a few cooking utensils hung upon other pegs, that house lacked no essential thing. This woodman was in possession of a house which had been a thousand years in process of building. Perhaps on the very day it was finished he came along and entered it. How did all jack-knife and hand-saw architecture sink into insignificance in contrast with this house in the solitudes of the great forest! Moreover, the tenant fared like a prince; within thirty yards of his coniferous house a mountain stream went rushing past to the sea. In the swirls and eddies under the shelving rocks, if one could not land half a dozen trout within an hour, he deserved to go hungry as a penalty for his awkwardness. Now and then a deer came out into the openings, and, at no great distance, quail, rabbits and pigeons could be found. What did this man want more than Nature furnished him? He had a house with a "cupola" two hundred and forty feet high, and game at the cost of taking it.

It was a good omen, that the chimneys of the house on the hill had not been topped out more than a week, before two white doves alighted on them, glancing curiously down into the flues, and then toward the heavens. Nothing but the peace which they brought could have insured the serenity of that house against an untoward event which occurred a week afterward. Late one evening the expressman delivered a sack at the rear door, with a note from a friend in the city, stating that the writer, well knowing our liking for thoroughbred stock, had sent over one of the choicest game-chickens in San Francisco. The qualities of that bird were not overstated. Such a clean and delicately-shaped head! The long feathers on his neck shaded from black to green and gold. His spurs were as slender and sharp as lances; and his carriage was that of a prince, treading daintily the earth, as if it were not quite good enough for him. There was a world of poetry about that chicken, and he could also be made to serve some important uses. It is essential that every one dwelling on a hill, in the suburbs, should be notified of the dawn of a new day. Three Government fortifications in the bay let off as many heavy guns at daybreak; and, as the sound comes rolling in from seaward, the window casements rattle responsively. But these guns do not explode concurrently; frequently more than ten minutes intervene from the first report to the last one. There is ever a lingering uncertainty as to which is making a truthful report, or whether they are not all shooting wide of the mark. Then, there is a military school close by, which stirs up the youngsters with a reveille, a gong and a bell, at short intervals. With so many announcements, and none of them concurrent, there would still remain a painful uncertainty as to whether the day had dawned; but when that game bird lifted up his voice, and sounded his clarion notes high over the hill, the guns of Alcatraz and the roll of the drums over the way, there could be no doubt that the day was at the dawn.

For a week did this mettlesome bird lift up his voice above all the meaner roosters on the hill; but one morning there was an ominous silence about the precincts where he was quartered. The Alcatraz gun had been let off; but the more certain assurance of the new day had failed. Something had surely happened, for a neighbor was seen hurrying up the walk in the gray of the morning, red, puffy, and short of wind, at that unseasonable hour.

"Come with me, and take a look in my yard.... There, is that your blasted game chicken?"

"Why, yes—no—he was sent over as a present from a friend."

Just then the whole mischief was apparent; a great Cochin rooster was sneaking off toward the hedge, bloody and blind; two Houdans lay on their backs, jerking their feet convulsively—in short, that hen-yard had been swept as with the besom of destruction.

"Do you call that a poetical or sentimental bird, such as a Christian man ought to worship?"

"No, not exactly."

Just then that game chicken arched his beautiful neck and sent his clear notes high over the hill and into the very heavens. We hinted, in a mollifying way, that he had escaped over a fence ten feet high, but that blood would tell.

"Yes, I think it has told this morning. Never mind the damages; but I think you had better cut his wings," said our neighbor, already placated.

That bird was given away before the next sunset. But O! friend; by the guns of Alcatraz, and the white doves that alighted on the chimney-tops, emblems of war and peace, send us no more game chickens, to disturb the peace of the hill, or to finish the work of destruction begun on that unlucky morning.

From the hill one may look out of the Golden Gate, as through the tube of a telescope, and see all the watery waste and eternal scene-shifting beyond. When the dull, undulating hummocks look like a drove of camels in the desert, you may be sure that the newly-married couple just embarking on the outward-bound steamer, on a bridal tour to Los Angeles or the Hawaiian Islands, will cease their caroling and chirping within an hour. Half an hour after sunset, if the atmosphere is clear, one may see the wide-off light of the Farallones; the nearer lights of Point Bonita and Alcatraz, almost in line, dwarfed to mere fire-flies now; but when the Gate has lost the glow of its burnished gold, these great sea-lamps, hung over this royal avenue, tell an honest home story for the battered ships low down on the horizon.

The little tugs which round under the quarters of the great wheat ships and rush them out to sea, know how to overcome the inertia of the great hulks. They tug spitefully, but the ship has to move, and you see the white sails already beginning to fall down from the yards, for the work where the blue water begins. It may be a grotesque association, but have you never seen a small woman, with a wonderful concentration of energy, tug her great lazy hulk of a husband out into the broad field of earnest endeavor in much the same way? Once there, his inertia overcome, the feminine tow-line cast off, he did brave and honest work, making the race quite abreast of average men. But the woman, who tugged him from his lazy anchorage out into a good offing, did as much for that man as he ever did for himself. Nothing more fortunate can happen to a great many men than that they be towed out to sea early. And in not a few instances, nothing more unfortunate could happen than that they should ever return. This last remark would have been softened a little, had it not been repeated with emphasis by a tender-hearted woman.

Just after a winter rain, there are occasionally realistic views of the great city in the foreground, which are so ugly that one never forgets them. The hills are brought nigh; all the houses seem to rise out of the desert, and along the water front the spars of shipping look like a forest which has been blasted by some devouring flame. It is certain that these forests will never sprout again; and there is such a dead look that, were it not for the little tugs going back and forth, one might imagine that all men had hastened away, and left the city to silence and the desert. But after nightfall the thousand lamps glorify the city; the blackened forest along the water front has faded out; and a mild sort of charity steals over one, suggesting that, after all, it is a goodly city set upon a hill, and that its peculiar beauty is not alone in appearing to the best advantage by gaslight. The background of hills is more angular and jerky than ever before, because all the softening effect has been taken out of the atmosphere. There is no distance, no dreamy haze to spread like a gossamer veil over these hard outlines. Nature is wonderfully honest and self-revealing. Evidently these hills were never finished. They lack all the rounded beauty, all the gentle curves and slopes, and all the fine touches of a perfected work. They look as if, when in a plastic state, they had been set by the jerk of an earthquake. Who knows but another jerk might take these kinks out and tone down all these stiff angles, and otherwise put on the finishing touches? If it must be done in this way, let the softening undulations be as gentle as possible. It is very inconvenient to get up in the morning and find that the chimney-top is either on the garden walk, or that it has been turned three-quarters round, in the very wantonness and devilment of Nature.

Some day there will be a closer recognized relation between landscape gardening and landscape painting. If the work is done badly in either department, it will make little difference whether an acre of canvas is hung upon the wall, or whether lines have been badly drawn and colors crudely laid on to an acre of earth. The style of trimming trees so that they are a libel on Nature, and the geometrical diagrams worked up in a garden, can hardly be referred to any very high standard of art. But if my neighbor is delighted with trees representing spindles, ramrods, paint brushes, cylinders, cones, and what not, I would no more quarrel with him than with the man who is under the pleasing delusion that he is an artist, because, in a more remote way, he has been traducing Nature with certain grotesque figures laid on to canvas.

A hedge will bear cutting into line, because it is to be treated as nothing more than the frame of the landscape to be worked up. The former may be as stiff and artificial in its way, as a gilt or mahogany frame, and do no violence to good taste; if it hides an ugly fence, a point has been gained. One cannot expect much diversity of surface on a single acre. A large lawn will give the effect of greater flatness. If you find the hired gardener, bred in some noted school in Europe, setting out trees in straight lines, exhort him to penitence at once. If he remain obdurate, cut the trees down with your little hatchet and pitch them over the fence, but keep your temper as sweet as a June morning. He will see by that time that you have ideas to be respected. Grouping the trees, on the lawn and elsewhere, neutralizes, in part, the effect of a flat surface; it is better than the poor apology of a little hillock, which suggests an ant's nest, or that a coyote may be burrowing in that vicinity. Something may be done in the way of massing colors with annuals to produce good effects. But ribbon gardening, according to the patterns laid down by florists, has no nearer relation to art in landscape gardening than crochet work has to landscape painting. It is a fantastic trick, which may very well please rural clowns, but is in some sort an offense to good taste.

Neither is it necessary that all the trees and shrubs which a florist has for sale should be admitted to the private garden. More than one-half of them have no merit; they neither set off the grounds, nor have any peculiarity worth a moment's attention. They figure in the florist's list under very attractive names, but if taken home they will probably prove but scrubby little bushes, fit only to be dedicated to the rubbish-heap and the annual bon-fire in the Spring. A plant or a shrub which gives no pleasure either in its form or the color of its flower, and has no suggestive associations, may do well enough for a botanical garden. Many of us may like occasionally to look at a hippopotamus or an elephant in the menagerie, or at the zoological gardens, but we don't want these specimens brought home to our private grounds. Some of the sequoia gigantea family do very well in the forest. Once in a lifetime we can afford to make a journey to look at them. But why undertake to bring home one of these vegetable elephants as a specimen, when we know that it will require a thousand years for its growth, and that most of us will come a little short of that measure of time? Some trees may be planted for posterity, and others may be safely left to take their chances. If any one wishes to contemplate upon his grounds a shrub of the future dimensions of one of the Calaveras group, let him plant it at once. Most of the vegetable monsters went out with the ichthyosaurus, and as for the few that remain, they will yet be an affront to the pigmies who are swarming on the earth.

"Why did we plant cherry trees along the rear fence?" To make friends with the birds and the children. You can get more songs from the birds, and more of song and glee from the children, on a small investment in cherry trees than in any other way. Those last year's birds' nests tell the story. The robin, thrush, oriole and linnet will come early and stay late. Groups of children will come in the front way, and will never be so happy as when invited to go down the rear garden walk, unless in the supremest moments when they step from your shoulders into the trees, and never come back until they have closed their fingers on the last cherry. The man who is not satisfied to divide all his cherries with the birds and the children is a curmudgeon; notably so is he who plants cherry trees in front of his lot, and gets into a white heat of rage because boys of average Sunday school antecedents could not resist the temptation to borrow the fruit. Besides, the eclectic judgment of children, the sparrow, the yellow-jacket and the honey-bee will always tell you where the best nectarines and plums may be found.

It is well to reserve a nook for little experiments in horticulture or floriculture which one wishes to make. A great many theories may be brought home and decently buried, or be made to sprout in such a corner. The larger the spaces, the more one will be tempted to use the spade at odd hours; and none of us has yet found out all the remedial qualities of dry earth freshly turned over day after day. A hard day's work, taxing brain more than hands, brings on a degree of nervous irritability. There is a dry electrical atmosphere; the attrition of trade winds and sand half the year; and the rushing to and fro of busy and excited men, charged as full of electricity as they can hold, and bent upon charging everybody else, so that at nightfall the sparks will snap at the finger-ends, and the air will crackle like a brush-heap just set on fire. Now, the earth is a very good conductor. It is better to let this surplus electricity run down the fingers on to the spade, and along its shining steel blade into the ground, than to blow up your best friend. An hour of honest battle with the weeds is better than any domestic thunder storm. By that time the sun will have dropped down into the ocean, just beyond the Golden Gate, glorifying garden and hill-top, and setting, for a moment, its lamp of flame in the western windows. Every plant and shrub will have some part in a subtile and soothing ministry; and then, if ever, it will occur to you that this is a mellow old world after all.

THE GARDEN ON THE HILL.

THE GARDEN ON THE HILL.

It was a plausible theory, and given out in a demure and confiding way by a feminine oracle, that honeysuckle cuttings should each be inserted in a potato, and so planted. As the scion had no root and needed moisture, it would be supplied by the potato. It seemed the very thing to do. The wonder was that so simple an expedient had not been suggested before. That theory was honestly tested, and it has since been laid on the top shelf with a great many other feminine theories about floriculture. Twenty honeysuckle scions were each planted with one end in an enormous red potato. Never did one of those honeysuckles grow; but there sprang up such a growth of potatoes as never had been seen on the hill. They were under the doorstep, under the foundation of the house; they shot up everywhere. Was that the last of the misadventure? By no manner of means. In the very porch of the church that daughter of Eve inquired slily, "How are your honeysuckles?" And then she glided in as if she had done nothing for which she needed forgiveness.

Certain grafting experiments came out a shade better. But every graft put in on the south side of a tree died, while those on the north side nearly all lived. These were protected by some degree of shade, while the hot sun melted the wax on the south side, which ran down in liquid streams of resin and poisoned the bark around the cleft. All this might have been known in advance. But a little modicum of knowledge learned by costly experience will stick to one through life, while that which costs nothing is rarely laid up as worth having. It ought to be known, also, that there is no better plan of grafting a tree than that which our ancestors followed a hundred years ago, when, with a little moist clay and top-tow, every scion inserted lived. Then the cider mill was an orthodox institution in every neighborhood. It is not worth your while to dissent from that proposition, when you have probably played truant from a summer school to ride around on the sweep of a cider mill, and suck the new cider through a straw, being stung the meanwhile occasionally by a "yellow-jacket." Even now a cider mill by the roadside, with the sour pomace scattered about, is a humanizing institution. It will send you back to the old orchard, the great branching elm, and the wide-spreading roof slanting down in the rear, quicker than any other sign or symbol to be found along the dusty way of middle life. For one hour's ride on that sweep, and a nibble at the spice-apples sliding down the hopper, one might still be consoled for the dreadful frown of the school mistress, and for that feminine refinement on purgatorial cruelty which compelled the truant to stand for an hour on one leg, and to hold out a bible at arm's length in his dexter hand. An acidulated school mistress, who had been losing her sweetness for forty years, never was a desirable object to meet, after having tasted the sweets on a summer day at a cider mill. The hornets were well enough in their way, but the sting of that school mistress was not.

Note, too, that this grafting process reaches over beyond your apple trees. The best races, or sub-divisions of people, come of the best stocks which are continually grafted on. Your blue blood is mixed with more not so blue, or the stock runs out. Down at the root of those apple trees yonder you may find traces of the woolly aphis. It is a sign that the constitution of such trees has been weakened. Digging down you remove the aphis, put fresh soil around the tree, scrape the rusty trunk, cut off the top, and put in two or three grafts from a stock that has vitality; and very soon this rejuvenated tree, bending under its weight of fruit in early Autumn, is something of which no amateur horticulturist need be ashamed. A thoroughbred people will impress language, law, and custom, as none other can upon the world. It is not isolation which secures this result, but the taking of many stocks upon the original trunk. If pulmonary New England is to be physically resuscitated, it will not come of boasting of revolutionary sires, but rather because Germans, Irish, Danes and Swedes are thronging all the avenues of her busy life.

The transition from grafting to budding is natural enough. Those twenty white stakes stand as so many monuments of another horticultural disaster. On a September day, twenty buds, so rare that the original stock could not be bought at any price, had been deftly slipped into as many "suckers," which had come out from the roots of as many rose bushes. The next Spring they were set and staked, and each was about as precious as the right eye of any amateur horticulturist. The small buds had developed into branches a foot long; great double peerless roses had been hanging pendent from the original stocks—roses with regal names and titles. There would have been twenty glorified specimens of floriculture to-day, but for that foreign gardener who had been "educated in the best schools in Europe," who knew everything, and could not be told anything. Roses must be cut in to make new wood. Before night he had clipped those twenty standards each below the bud, and had taken himself off with his diabolical shears, his insufferable conceit, and his rustic innocence. He never came back to look at the work of his hands, nor to hear the wish (mildly expressed) that a pair of shears might be invented which would shorten the stature of that gardener at least a foot. There was a special aggravation of the case, because we had been nursing a theory for years, that by splitting two rose-germs of different kinds, and putting the odd halves together, if growth could then be induced, there would be a hybrid rose—either the color of the one would be distinct on one side, and the other on the opposite side, or the rose would be mottled, having red and white spots on each leaf. This Siamese bud had started finely. Bad luck to the gardener's shears which had abbreviated that experiment and enveloped the vexed question again in darkness. But here is a bed of mottled pinks, and these could have all been the result of crosses. It may be that the humming birds, going from one blossom to another, have mixed the pollen, or some hidden law may be active which cannot be traced. Note, too, that besides this promiscuous fleck of red and white, in not a few instances a single flower will have the red on one-half and the white on the other. The florists call this sporting. The same class of facts may be observed in the double petunias, all of which are hybrids, or nearly so—a purple, white, and red leaf being found in a single flower. There are apples, too (or there were twenty years ago), one-half of which were sour and the other half sweet. The qualities were not interblended, and even the colors were separate.

It was a pretty conceit, and mollifying withal, that a feminine florist connected with pansies: "When you go past them they will turn their heads toward you, greeting you so lovingly." That little myth might be strung on the same string with the buttercup, which only reflects its golden hue upon the chins of those who love June butter.

That alfalfa experiment is only admitted by special grace under the head of floriculture, although the lucerne has no lack of handsome blossoms. A little seed was sprinkled on the ground after the spring rains and forgotten. When the winter rains came again, that alfalfa reached out for both the zenith and nadir. Three times a year it is cut to keep it from falling down. The details are suppressed here, with only an intimation that they are sufficient for several agricultural addresses. If that man is a benefactor who has made two blades of grass grow in the place of one, what is he who has made alfalfa shoot up at the rate of seven tons to the acre, in the place of miserable sorrel-top? But there was a discount upon that experiment. The alfalfa drew to it all the gophers in the neighborhood. They mined and countermined, until the whole area had been honeycombed. They multiplied by scores and hundreds. These rodents drew together all the vagrant cats in the neighborhood, which made this corner of the garden a common hunting ground. Here upon this small area was a crop of alfalfa, a crop of gophers—which no man has numbered to this day—and a crop of cats, as fiercely predatory and as unrelenting in a skirmish as were ever put in battle array. But somehow this experiment has not been satisfactory. It has branched out in too many ways. Two empty arnica bottles suggest the muscular strains which came from moderating those cats with an occasional volley of rocks. And at this writing, half a dozen felines are on the fence looking solemnly down at the sapping and mining which is going on below.

There are no birds in this region which domesticate so readily as the linnets, and which improve more on an intimate acquaintance. They are not so obstreperous as the wren, nor so shy as the lark and the robin. The latter is a migratory bird, coming down to this latitude only in the Winter, and going north for a nesting in the Spring. A single robin has lived in the garden all Winter, becoming nearly as tame as a chicken, following the man with the spading-fork, and snapping up the worms in a sharp competition with his cousin, the brown thrush. The former, in place of any song, has a lonesome and fugitive call, as though waiting for his mate. He is probably a bachelor, who has not yet set up an establishment of his own. A little girl, having gravely considered the case, suggests that he ought to send a letter inviting a mate to come. O, my little friend! oral communication is much more interesting; at least, it was so in our time. Neither was it considered cowardice if the heart came up into the throat.

The linnets are model birds in their domestic life. A pair built a nest last year under the porch, and, having brought up one family of four and dismissed them, the pair furbished up the nest again and brought up a family of four more the same season. They have held secret conferences over the nest recently, and it evidently falls in with their views of domestic economy to use it again. It is possible that they appreciated a little device which we had to adopt for their safety. As the nest was at the extremity of a festoon of vines, there was nothing to hinder the house-cat from going up and feasting on callow birds. An odd lot of trout hooks, fastened to the lower vines, operated as a powerful non-conductor.

Some years ago, a pair of linnets having made their nest in the porch of another house, everything went well until the young had just appeared; then the mother disappeared one night, and the displaced vines in the morning told the whole story. Four orphan birds appealed to the sympathies of the young folk. The nest was taken into the house, the birds carefully covered with cotton, and every effort was made to save them. They would eat nothing, and, as a last resort, the nest was replaced in the vines. The father came back soon, talked with his children, brooded them, fed them day after day, brought them up to maturity, and turned out as prosperous a family of young linnets as there was in that neighborhood. Mr. Linnet can have the most positive certificate of rare domestic virtues. There is the slight drawback that he paints, does all the singing, and is rather vain; while Mrs. Linnet is a plain, unassuming bird, always clad in gray, and is not up in music. All through the realm of ornithology the male bird has the brightest colors and does the singing. But analogy is all at fault when you come to men and women. Who puts on all the bright colors here, paints, and carols upon the topmost bough of the domestic tree? By what law has this order been reversed? And yet the sum of your political economy is, that a woman who can dress more, use pigments more cunningly, and talk faster, and sing better than a man, shall not vote! Is that the way to set up your ideal republic?

One may learn secrets of ornithology in the garden which the books will not yield up. That boy coming up the rear garden walk, who has swung himself into a pear tree to look into the nest of a finch, has done the same thing consecutively on a dozen mornings. He will be able to tell just how many days are required for incubation, and how many days intervene before the birds are full-fledged. I should have had more hope for him as a future ornithologist, had not the young heathen asked for the eggs to put upon his string. There is not such a great difference, after all, between an Apache with a string of scalps at his belt, and a school boy with his string of birds' eggs. If it were not for that infernal cruelty which has been inbred by false teaching, or no teaching, our relations with all the lower forms of life would be intimate and confidential, instead of suspicious and oftentimes revolting. One can match the worst specimens of cannibalism by pointing out strings of larks hung up by their bills any day in the market. I know of no cannibal who ever became ferocious enough to eat singing birds, or to find pleasure in killing them.

There are two or three notes in the song of the lark which are not surpassed in sweetness by any of the oriole or finch family. If one will take a dash into the country some bright morning, on horseback, and note how this joyous bird goes before him, alighting on the fence and calling down a benediction from the heavens, either he will come back filled with gladness, or his liver trouble has got the best of him. All the song birds of much note in this State may be assigned to the three families of thrushes, orioles and finches. In the first of these we have the robin; in the second, the lark; and in the third, the linnet. The sub-families will reach nearly a hundred, and there is not one of them which will not pay in songs and in the destruction of insects for all the mischief he does. Now, a bird that pays his bills in advance, has a right to protection. Observe, too, how soon they recognize any attempt to establish friendly relations with them. Last year a finch had her feet entangled by a string with which she had lined her nest. A little help rendered to set her free, made her an intimate friend, and a shallow pan of water in the grass drew daily dividends of fresh songs. A box with a few holes in it, set on a post, will not remain empty a year; either the blue-birds or the martins will take possession of it.

A garden ought to be planned as much for the birds as for lawns and flowers. The hedges will afford hiding-places for timid birds, and shade on hot days. The tall trees will furnish perches when they want to sing; and a well-fed bird, that has no family trouble on hand, wants to sing nearly all his leisure time. As for the cherries and small fruits, the birds are only gentle communists. If we cannot tolerate a division made with all the inspiration of song, and which leaves us at least one side of the cherry, how are we to tolerate that division predicted by some of the labor prophets, if made with the music of paving-stones and much fragile crockery?

One cannot go far into the woods in any direction without observing what a protest all the birds utter at first. There are harsh screams, sharp notes of warning, and general scolding. Now, every bird has a great deal of curiosity to take a look at strangers. For a time they flit about in the tall tree-tops, and afterward begin to hop down to lower limbs, and, gradually descending, come to the ground, or on to low bushes. By remaining quiet an hour or two, a dozen or more will circle around within a few feet, turning their heads on one side occasionally, and quizzing in a saucy, merry way. In a little while one may be on intimate terms with the very birds which protested so loudly at his coming. They will tell him a great many secrets. The leaves of his book on ornithology may be a quarter of a mile square, but what can not be read on one day may be read on some other. Even an owl burrowing with a ground-squirrel, and both agreeing very well as tenants in common with a rattlesnake, may suggest questions of affinity and community which it might be inconvenient to answer at once. If you prefer to have some readings in a book of nature, you can turn down a leaf and go back the next day with the certainty that no one has lugged off the volume. And if your finger-mark is a tree 250 feet high, there will be no great difficulty in finding the place.

But a garden of a single acre can only be at most, a diamond edition of nature. A great deal must be left out. The owl, as a singing-bird, is not wanted; and, although tadpoles may be raised in the little fish-pond, it is not expected that the hippopotamus will come there to wallow. The birds must of necessity be few and select. If the lark sometimes sings at sunrise on the lower fence, and the thrush and the linnet bid you good morning out of the nearest tree-tops, you will not fail to respond, unless on that particular morning when you especially need an extract of dandelion; and that will generally happen when the golden blossoms can be found along the way-side. It might be well, also, to leave a little nook for sage and worm-wood. They are not only handsome plants in their way, but the average wisdom of any grandmother will unfold their remedial properties.

There are seven well-defined species of humming-birds to be found in this State, and two or three more not described, except in the unpublished notes of Grayson. None of these birds are singers; the best they can do is to make a noise like the turning of a small ratchet-wheel. But somehow, this ungenial, obstreperous little bird, darting in a saucy way close to one's ears, and then, balancing over a flower, never ceases to excite interest. He might have dropped out of Paradise, if it were not for his temper, which lacks any heavenly quality, and for his song, which would soon raise a mutiny above or below. He is a half unreal bird; and we do not know what soul in a transition state may be lodged in his little body. There are a great many souls small enough to occupy it. Now, the house-cat had been taught, after a long time, to respect birds, and that to look longingly at a humming-bird was something akin to sacrilege. But original sin, or instinct, was always ready to break out at the sight of a humming-bird. One evening she trotted down the garden walk with head up and a diminutive bird in her mouth. It took a lively turn of three times or more around that acre lot to overhaul that cat; nor was it done until the pursuer was thoroughly red in the face and blown, having just strength enough left to gripe her by the throat and make her let go. It was the poorest job of bird-philanthropy ever done in that garden. There was nothing to reward a merciful man but a humming miller, of just the size and finish, from bill to wings, of a humming-bird, but only an ugly bug as to his posterior half—a creature with his head and wings over in the realms of ornithology, and the rest of his ugly body still in the field of entomology. The quality of mercy is strained which undertakes to protect any such half-formed work of creation. When, therefore, a few evenings afterward, a shrike, or butcher-bird, came into the garden, devoured half a dozen of these bogus humming-birds, and hung up as many more on the thorns of a honey-locust, that circumstance suggested no doubt about the eternal fitness of things.

The quail is easily domesticated in any garden, and, if protected, will become as tame as the chickens. I have more than once seen them run where a hen was scratching, and pick up whatever could be found. Some years ago, while mowing the grass around the edges of another garden, a nest was discovered containing a dozen hen's eggs and seventeen quail's eggs. The village savants never did fairly settle the questions raised about that nest. Did the hen have the prior right, first choosing the place and making the nest? or did the quail pre-empt, and was the hen an unlawful squatter? Did they lay on alternate days, or concurrently as to time? And how did the eggs get that arrangement by which all the crevices were filled with the smaller ones? And which did the incubating? The quail could not cover the nest. But nearly all the eggs of both sorts were ultimately hatched. It had been settled before that time, by our system of patriarchial jurisprudence, that the issue followed the condition of the mother. The chicks respected that principle, since so rudely questioned, and each followed its mother, so that substantial justice was done, and the heavens did not fall.

No garden is well stocked without a pair or two of toads. They will learn to distinguish your foot-steps from those of a stranger, as they come out at twilight. The toad is a philosopher, and is the most self-contained of all living things. He meditates all day in the shade, and takes his dinner promptly at twilight. That dinner may require a thousand insects. The dart of his tongue is never made amiss. If you cannot cultivate him for his beauty—and there may be a doubt on that score—you can tolerate him for his honest work. There is some cant about the ugliness of the toad that you would not respect when you have taught a pair to come out of their hiding places at your call, have given them pet names, and have seen them slay the remorseless mosquito. If you step on one after nightfall, it will be useless to objurgate. You cannot provoke him to talk back.

Consider what an advantage the toad has in another respect. He not only hibernates a part of the year, and thus saves his board-bills, but he has been known to suspend active life for a quarter of a century or more; as when, getting into a hollow tree, the orifice has been filled up, or he has been wedged in the cleft of a rock. But when restored, he resumes life with no inconvenience to his digestion. What might be gained if one only had the vitality of this batrachian! You have been overtaken by a stupidly dull era, or are disgusted with life. What an advantage to call on some friend to pack you away in ice, and to thaw you out only when the next quarter-century bell rings! Since we cannot go safely over this bridge with the batrachian, it is not well to put such a discount on his ugliness, nor is it well to be too exclamatory, if you tread on him in the twilight.