s me into all sorts of delightful
experiences. Conventionality does not hold us as tightly as it does in
the East, and a certain tempting feeling of unlimited possibilities in
life makes waking up in the morning a small adventure in itself. It
isn't necessary to point out the dangers of an unlimited "Why not?"
cult--they are too obvious. "Why not?" is a question that one's
imagination asks, and imagination is one of the best spurs to action. I
will give an example of what I mean: When war was declared J----
suggested putting contribution boxes with red crosses on the collars
of "Rags" and "Tags," the boys' twin Yorkshire terriers, and coaxing
them to sit up on the back of the motor. I never had begged on a
street corner, but I thought at once, "Why not?" The result was much
money for the Red Cross, an increased knowledge of human nature for me,
as well as some delightful new friends. I should never have had the
courage to try it in New York--let us say; I should have been afraid
I'd be arrested.

At first to an Easterner the summer landscape seems dry and dusty, but
after living here one grows to love the peculiar soft tones of tan and
bisque, with bright shades of ice plant for color, and by the sea the
wonderful blues and greens of the water. No one can do justice to the
glory of that. Sky-blue, sea-blue, the shimmer of peacocks' tails and
the calm of that blue Italian painters use for the robes of their
madonnas, ever blend and ever change. Trees there are few, the graceful
silhouette of a eucalyptus against a golden sky, occasional clumps of
live oaks, and on the coast road to San Diego the Torry pines, relics of
a bygone age, growing but one other place in the world, and more
picturesque than any tree I ever saw. One swaying over a canyon is the
photographer's joy. It has been posing for hundreds of years and will
still for centuries more, I have no doubt.

Were I trying to write a sort of sugar-coated guide-book, I could make
the reader's mouth water, just as the menu of a Parisian restaurant
does. The canyons through which we have wandered, the hills we have
circled, Grossmont--that island in the air--Point Loma, the southern tip
of the United States, now, alas, closed on account of the war (Fort
Rosecrans is near its point), and further north the mountains and orange
groves--snow-capped Sierras looming above orchards of blooming
peach-trees!

Even the names add to the fascination, the Cuyamaca Mountains meani