e place
was called, came to me from a beloved aunt who had truly found it that.
With it came a cow, a misunderstood motor, and a wardrobe trunk. A
Finnish lady came with the cow, and my brother-in-law's chauffeur
graciously consented to come with the motor. The trunk was empty. It was
all so complete that the backbone of the family, suddenly summoned on
business, departed for the East, feeling that he had left us comfortably
established for the month of his absence. The motor purred along the
nine miles to the railroad station without the least indication of the
various kinds of internal complications about to develop, and he boarded
the train, beautifully composed in mind, while we returned to our
hill-top.

It is a most enchanting spot. A red-tiled bungalow is built about a
courtyard with cloisters and a fountain, while vines and flowers fill
the air with the most delicious perfume of heliotrope, mignonette, and
jasmine. Beyond the big living-room extends a terrace with boxes of deep
and pale pink geraniums against a blue sea, that might be the Bay of
Naples, except that Vesuvius is lacking. It is so lovely that after
three years it still seems like a dream. We are only one short look from
the Pacific Ocean, that ocean into whose mists the sun sets in flaming
purple and gold, or the more soft tones of shimmering gray and
shell-pink. We sit on our terrace feeling as if we were in a proscenium
box on the edge of the world, and watch the ever-varying splendor. At
night there is the same sense of infinity, with the unclouded stars
above, and only the twinkling lights of motors threading their way down
the zigzag of the coast road as it descends the cliffs to the plain
below us. These lights make up in part for the fewness of the harbor
lights in the bay. The Pacific is a lonely ocean. There are so few
harbors along the coast where small boats can find shelter that yachts
and pleasure craft hardly exist. Occasionally we see the smoke of a
steamer on its way to or from ports of Lower California, as far south as
the point where the curtain drops on poor distracted Mexico, for there
trade ceases and anarchy begins. There is a strip of land, not belonging
to the United States, called Lower California, controlled by a handsome
soldierly creature, Governor Cantu, whose personal qualities and motives
seem nicely adapted to holding that much, at least, of Mexico in
equilibrium. Only last summer he was the guest of our small but
p