orously invited occupants. Finally they came upon a smooth
sward like that of an English park, embellished with huge date-palms,
luxuriant magnolias, and regal banana-trees. Then they passed a brook
tumbling in artificial cascades between banks thick with mossy ferns,
and bright with blossoms. The children led their companion beneath fig
and bay trees through an Italian garden; all of this splendid luxury
of verdure had sprung from the desert as the result of a fortune
patiently spent in irrigation.

MRS. FREMONT OLDER,
in _The Giants._

JULY 19.

Some men have an eye for trees and an inborn sympathy with these
rooted giants, as if the same sap ran in their own veins. To them
trees have a personality quite as animals have, and, to be sure, there
are "characters" among trees. I knew a solitary yellow pine which
towered in the landscape, the last of its race. Its vast columnal
trunk seemed to loom and expand as one approached. Always there was
distant music in the boughs above, a noble strain descending from the
clouds. Its song was more majestic than that of any other tree, and
fell upon the listening ear with the far-off cadence of the surf, but
sweeter and more lyrical, as if it might proceed from some celestial
harp. Though there was not a breeze stirring below, this vast tree
hummed its mighty song. Apparently its branches had penetrated to
another world than this, some sphere of increasing melody.

C.H. KIRKHAM,
in _In the Open._

JULY 20.

You will think the gentlemen were fine dandies in those Mexican days,
when I tell you that they often wore crimson velvet knee trousers
trimmed with gold lace, embroidered white shirts, bright green cloth
or velvet jackets with rows and rows of silver buttons and red sashes
with long streaming ends. Their wide-brimmed _sombreros_ (hats)
were trimmed with silver or gold braid and tassels. * * * Each
gentleman wore a large Spanish cloak of rich velvet or embroidered
cloth, and if it rained, he threw over his fine clothes a
_serape_, or square woolen blanket, with a slit cut in the middle
for the head.

ELLA M. SEXTON,
in _Stories of California._

JULY 21.

ON THE PLANTING OF THE TREES AT THE PACIFIC THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY, OAKLAND.

And what shall be the children's tree,
To grow while we are sleeping?
The maple sweet; the manzanete;
The gentle willow weeping;
The larch; the yew; the oak so true,
Kind mother strong and tender;