ven when ill she is still bright and hopeful, so that a friend
exclaimed, "Grandma, I do believe you would laugh if you were dying;"
and she replied, "Well, so many folks go to the Lord with a long face, I
guess He will be glad to see one come in smiling."

Oh, how repulsive the artificial bloom, the cosmetics and hair-dyes
which make old age a horror, compared with her natural beauty! God bless
and keep dear Grandma Wade!

Little "Ted" is another character and favorite, and his letter to his
nurse in New York gives a good idea of how the place affects a bright,
impressionable child.

"My dear Julia: _It is a dummy near the hotel and it takes five
days to come here and there is an island right beyond the boat
house and they have a pigeon shoot every week. And there is six
hundred people here Julia, one hundred and fifty came yesterday._

"_There is a mountin across the river and a house very far away by
itself, Julia. I play in the sand every day of my life, and I take
swimming lessons and I have two oranges. California is the biggest
world in the country and there is a tree very, very far away. Julia
it is a puzzle walk near the hotel, Rose and me went all through it
and Julia, we got our way out easy._"

He has it all. All the trees are cultivated here, so I looked round for
the one Ted spoke of, and find it lights up at night and revolves for
the aid of the mariners. I think that all Californians echo his
sentiment that "California is the biggest world in the country"; and
compared with the hard work of the New England farmers, what is the
cultivation of orchards but playing in the sand with golden oranges?
Some one says that Californians "irrigate, cultivate, and exaggerate."

Charles Nordhoff, the veteran journalist and author, lives within sight
of the hotel (which he pronounces the most perfect and charming hotel he
knows of in Europe or America), in a rambling bungalow consisting of
three small cottages moved from different points and made into one. He
believes in California for "health, pleasure, and residence." It is a
rare privilege to listen to his conversation, sitting by his open fire
or at his library table, or when he is entertaining friends at dinner.

So ends my sketch of Coronado. Coronado! What a perfect word! Musical,
euphonious, regal, "the crowned"! The name of the governor of New
Galicia, and captain-general of the Spanish army, sent forth i