o
boys, and two dogs. We came for a year and, like many another family,
have taken root for all our days--or so it seems now.

The reactions of more or less temperamental people, suddenly
transplanted from a rigorous climate to sunshine and the beauty and
abundance of life in Southern California, perhaps give a too highly
colored picture, so please make allowance for the bounce of the ball. I
mean to be quite fair. It doesn't rain from May to October, but when it
does, it can rain in a way to make Noah feel entirely at home.
Unfortunately, that is when so many of our visitors come--in February!
They catch bad colds, the roses aren't in bloom, and altogether they
feel that they have been basely deceived.

We rarely have thunder-storms, or at least anything you could dignify by
that name, but we do have horrid little shaky earthquakes. We don't have
mosquitoes in hordes, such as the Jersey coast provides, but we do
sometimes come home and hear what sounds like a cosy tea-kettle in the
courtyard, whereupon the defender of the family reaches for his gun and
there is one rattlesnake less to dread.

On our hill-top there are quantities of wild creatures--quail, rabbits,
doves, and ground squirrels and, unfortunately, a number of social
outcasts. Never shall I forget an epic incident in our history--the head
of the family in pajamas at dawn, in mortal combat with a small
black-and-white creature, chasing it through the cloisters with the
garden hose. Oh, yes, there is plenty of adventure still left, even
though we don't have to cross the prairies in a wagon.

People who know California and love it, I hope may enjoy comparing notes
with me. People who have never been here and who vaguely think of it as
a happy hunting-ground for lame ducks and black sheep, I should like to
tempt across the Rockies that they might see how much more it is than
that. It may be a lotus land to some, to many it truly seems the
promised land.

"Shall we be stepping westward?"

[Illustration]

THE
SMILING
HILL-TOP

No one should attempt to live on top of an adobe hill one mile from a
small town which has been brought up on the Declaration of Independence,
without previously taking a course in plain and fancy wheedling. This is
the mature judgment of a lady who has tried it. Not even in California!

When we first took possession of our hill-top early one June, nothing
was farther from my thoughts. "Suma Paz," "Perfect Peace," as th