Sang a lonesome dirge in its land of graves.
Strangely awed I felt, that day,
As I walked in the Mission old and gray--
The Mission Carmel at Monterey.

MADGE MORRIS WAGNER,
in _Mystery of Carmel._

JUNE 11.

Up to the American invasion, the traveler in California found welcome
in whatsoever house. Not food and bed and tolerance only, but warm
hearts and home. Fresh clothing was laid out in his chamber. His jaded
horse went to the fenceless pasture; a new and probably better steed
was saddled at the door when the day came that he must go. And in the
houses which had it, a casual fistful of silver lay upon his table,
from which he was expected to help himself against his present needs.
It was a society in which hotels could not survive (even long after
they were attempted) because every home was open to the stranger; and
orphan asylums were impossible. Not because fathers and mothers never
died, but because no one was civilized enough to shirk orphans.

CHARLES F. LUMMIS.
in _The Right Hand of the Continent, Out West,
August_, 1892.

JUNE 12.

Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so
far that life and death are not before you. Painted lizards slip in
and out of rock crevices, and pant on the white-hot sands. Birds,
humming-birds even, nest in the cactus scrub; woodpeckers befriend the
demoniac yuccas; out of the stark, treeless waste rings the music of
the night-singing mocking bird. If it be summer and the sun well down,
there will be a burrowing owl to call. Strange, furry, tricksey things
dart across the open places, or sit motionless in the conning towers
of the creosote.

MARY AUSTIN,
in _The Land of Little Rain._

JUNE 13.

EL CAMINO REAL.

_El Camino Real_--"The Royal Road," is the poetic name given to
the original government road of Spanish California that joined the
missions from San Diego to San Francisco de Solano. The route selected
by the Franciscan Fathers was the most direct road that was
practicable, connecting their four Presidios, three Pueblos and
twenty-one Missions. By restoring this road and making it a State
Highway with the twenty-one missions as stations, California will
come to possess the most historic, picturesque, romantic and unique
boulevard in the world.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES,
in _Missions and Landmarks._

JUNE 14.

Because we have such faith in the charms of California; because we
have such faith in the futu