ove.

S.A.R.,
_College Notre Dame, San Jose, Cal._

JANUARY 1.

A NEW YEAR'S WISH.

May each day bring thee something
Fair to hold in memory--
Some true light to shine
Upon thee in the after days.
May each night bring thee peace,
As when the dove broods o'er
The young she loves; may day
And night the circle of
A rich experience weave
About thy life, and make
It rich with knowledge, but radiant
With Love, whose blossoms shall be
Tender deeds.

HELEN VAN ANDERSON GORDON.

JANUARY 2.

THE MIRAGE ON THE CALIFORNIA DESERT.

To the south the eye rests upon a vast lake, which can be seen ten or
twelve miles distant from the slopes of the mountains, and when I
first saw it, its beauty was entrancing. Away to the south, on its
borders, were hills of purple, each reflected as clearly as though
photographed, and still beyond rose the caps and summits of other
peaks and mountains rising from this inland sea, whose waters were
of turquoise; yet, as we moved down the slope, the lake was always
stealing on before. It was of the things dreams are made of, that has
driven men mad and to despair, its bed a level floor of alkali and
clay, covered with a dry, impalpable dust that the slightest wind
tossed and whirled in air.

CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER,
in _Life in the Open._

JANUARY 3.

When the green waves come dashing,
With thunderous lashing,
Against the bold cliffs that defend the scarred earth,
He wheels through the roaring,
Where foam-flakes are pouring,
And flaps his broad wings in a transport of mirth.

JOSIAH KEEP,
in _The Song of the Sea-Bird_, in _Shells and Sea-Life._

JANUARY 4.

A long jagged peninsula, where barren heights and cactus-clad mesas
glow in the biting rays of an unobscured sun, where water holes are
accorded locations on the maps, and where, under the fluttering shade
of fluted palm boughs, life becomes a siesta dream. A land great in
its past and lean in its present. A land where the rattlesnake and
the sidewinder, the tarantula and the scorpion multiply, and where
sickness is unknown and fivescore years no uncommon span of life. A
land of strange contradictions! A peninsula which to the Spanish
_conquistadores_ was an island glistening in the azure web of
romance; a land for which the padres gave their lives in fanatic
devotion to the Cross; a land rich in history, when the timbers of the
_Mayflower_ were yet trees