Far up in the hills where life's worth while.

There the rivulet in gladness leaps
Down a fronded valley, sweet and cool,
Or pausing a little moment sleeps
In a mossy, rock-bound, limpid pool:
Away from the city, mile on mile,
Far up in the hills where life's worth while.

The wild bird carols its sweetest lay,
And the world seems golden with love's good cheer;
There is never a care to cloud the day,
And Heaven, itself, seems, oh, so near!
Away from the city, mile on mile.
Far up in the hills where life's worth while.

WILLIS GEORGE EMERSON.

JANUARY 31.

OUT HERE IN CALIFORNIA.

Out here in California, when Winter's on the scene
And the earth is like a maiden clad in shimmering robes of green;
When the mountains 'way off yonder lift their snowy peaks to God,
While here the dainty flowers raise their faces from the sod;
When the sunbeams kiss the waters till they laugh beneath the rays,
And nature seems a-joining in a matchless hymn of praise;
When there's just enough of frostiness a sense of life to give,
Right here in California it's a comfort just to live.

Out here in California in the January days
The soul of nature seems to sing a jubilee of praise,
And the songbirds whistle clearer, and the blossoms are more fair,
And someway joy and blessing seem about us in the air.
It's cold perhaps off yonder, but we never feel it here,
For the seasons run together through a Summer-haunted year,
And Dame Nature in her bounty leaves us nothing to forgive
Right here in California, where it's comfort just to live.

Out here in California where the orange turns to gold
And Nature has forgotten all the art of growing old,
There's not a day throughout the year when flowers do not grow;
There's not a single hour the streams do not unfettered flow;
There's not a briefest moment when the songsters do not sing,
And life's a sort of constant race 'twixt Summer and the Spring.
Why, just to know the joy of it one might his best years give--
Out here in California, where it's comfort just to live.

A.J. WATERHOUSE.

FEBRUARY 1.

Night-time in California. Elsewhere men only guess
At the glory of the evenings that are perfect--nothing less;
But here the nights, returning, are the wond'rous gifts of God--
As if the days were maidens fair with golden slippers shod.
There is no cloud to hide the sky; the universe is ours,