A Truthful Woman in Southern California | Page 2

calla-lily in a pot! When
she arrived and saw hedges and fields of lilies, hers went out of the
window. Another lady from Boston brought a quart bottle of the
blackest ink, only to spill it all upon a new carpet at Santa Barbara,
costing the boarding-house keeper thirty-five dollars. Everything that
one needs can be purchased all along the way, from a quinine capsule
to a complete outfit for any occasion.
As to the various ways of coming here, I greatly prefer the Southern
Pacific in winter, and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé in spring or
summer. Either will take you from New York to San Diego and return
for $137, allowing six months' stay. The "Phillips Excursion" will take
you from Boston to San Francisco for fifty-five dollars. But in this case
the beds are hard, and you provide your own meals. Some try the long
voyage, twenty-three days from New York to San Francisco. It is
considered monotonous and undesirable by some; others, equally good
judges, prefer it decidedly.
I believe in taking along a loose wrapper to wear in the cars, especially
when crossing the desert. It greatly lessens fatigue to be able to curl up
cosily in a corner and go to sleep, with a silk travelling hat or a long
veil on one's head, and the stiff bonnet or big hat with showy plumes
nicely covered in its long purse-like bag, and hanging on a hook above.

The sand and alkali ruin everything, and are apt to inflame the eyes and
nose. I find a hamper with strap indispensable on the train; it will hold
as much as a small trunk, yet it can be easily carried.
Now imagine you have arrived, very tired, and probably with a cold in
your head, for the close heated cars and the sudden changes of climate
are trying. You may be at The Raymond, and "personally conducted."
Nothing can be better than that. But if you are alone at Los Angeles, or
San Francisco, come straight down to Coronado Beach, and begin at
the beginning--or the end, as you may think it.
CHAPTER II.
AT CORONADO BEACH.
I associate Coronado Beach so closely with Warner (Charles D.), the
cultured and cosmopolitan, that every wave seems to murmur his name,
and the immense hotel lives and flourishes under the magic of his
rhetoric and commendation. Just as Philadelphia is to me
Wanamakerville and Terrapin, so Coronado Beach is permeated and
lastingly magnetized by Warner's sojourn here and what he "was
saying."
But I must venture to find fault with his million-times-quoted adjective
"unique" as it is used. It has been stamped on stationery and menu
cards, and has gone the world over in his volume "Our Italy," and no
one ever visits this spot who has not made the phrase his own. To me it
deserves a stronger word, or series of words. We say a pretty girl has a
"unique" way of dressing her hair, or an author a "unique" way of
putting things.
But as I look out of my window this glorious morning, and watch the
triple line of foaming waves breaking on the long beach, a silver sickle
in the sunshine; the broad expanse of the Pacific, with distant sails
looking like butterflies apoise; Point Loma grandly guarding the right,
and farther back the mountain view, where snowy peaks can just be
discerned over the nearer ranges; the quiet beauty of the grounds below,
where borders and ovals and beds of marguerites contrast prettily with

long lines and curves of the brilliant marigolds; grass, trees, and hedges
green as June--a view which embraces the palm and the pine, the ocean
and lofty mountains, cultivated gardens and rocky wastes, as I see all
this, I for one moment forget "unique" and exclaim, "How bold,
magnificent, and unrivalled!" Give me a new and fitting adjective to
describe what I see. Our best descriptive adjectives are so recklessly
used in daily life over minute matters, that absolutely nothing is left for
this rare combination.
As a daughter of New Hampshire in this farthest corner of the
southwest, my mind crosses the continent to the remote northeast and
the great Stone Face of the Franconia Mountains. Chiselled by an
Almighty hand, its rugged brow seamed by the centuries, its features
scarred by the storms of ages, gazing out over the broad land, where
centre the hopes of the human race, who can forget that face, sad with
the mysteries of pain and sorrow, yet inspiring with its rugged
determination, and at times softened with the touch of sunlit hope?
Point Loma has something of the same sphinx-like grandeur, with its
long bold promontory stretching out into the western waters. These two
seem to be keeping watch and ward over mountain