to wear; for in
Southern California in the winter it is never really hot in the sun and
it is often exceedingly cool in the shade. Besides, there is a sea wind
that blows pretty regularly and which makes a specialty of working
through the crannies in a silk shirt or a lingerie blouse. The
chilliest, most pallid-looking things I ever saw in my life were a pair
of white linen trousers I found in the top tray of my trunk when I
reached the extreme lower end of California. I had to cover them under
two blankets and a bedspread that night to keep the poor things from
freezing stiff.

The medium-weight garments an Easterner wears between seasons are
admirably suited for the West Coast in the winter; but the guileless
tenderfoot who is making his first trip to California usually doesn't
learn this until it is too late. If he is wise he studies out the
situation on his arrival, and thereafter takes his overcoat with him
when he goes riding and his sweater when he goes walking; but there are
many others who will be summer boys and girls though they perish in the
attempt.

At Coronado I witnessed a mighty pitiable sight. It was a cool day,
cooler than ordinary even, with a stiff wind blowing skeiny shreds of
sea fog in off the gray ocean; and a beating rain was falling at
frequent intervals. The veranda was full of Easterners trying to look
comfortable in summer clothes and not succeeding, while the road in
front was dotted with Westerners, comfortable and cozy in their thick
sweaters. There emerged upon the wind-swept porch a youth who would have
been a sartorial credit to himself on a Florida beach in February or
upon a Jersey board-walk in August; but he did not coincide with the
atmospheric scheme of things on a rainy March day down in Southern
California.

[Illustration: HE FELT HE WAS PROPERLY DRESSED FOR THE TIME, THE PLACE
AND THE OCCASION]

To begin with, he was a spindly and fragile person, with a knobby
forehead and a fade-away face. Dressed in close-fitting black and turned
sidewise, with his profile to you, he would instantly suggest a neatly
rolled umbrella with a plain bone handle. But he was not dressed in
black; he was dressed in white--all white, like a bride or a bandaged
thumb; white silk shirt; white flannel coat, with white pearl buttons
spangled freely over it; white trousers; white Panama hat; white socks;
white buckskin shoes, with white rubber soles on them. He was, in short,
all white except his