A Truthful Woman in Southern California | Page 3

and sea: each
appropriate in its place and equally impressive. There the stern prophet
surveying the home of great beginnings, the cradle of creative energy;
and here, its counterpart, a mighty recumbent lion, its dreamy, peaceful
gaze turned with confidence out over the wide Pacific to the setting sun,
with assurance of ultimate success, a pledge of aspirations satisfied, of
achievements assured, of----Whoa there! Hello! This to my runaway
steeds, Imagination and Sentiment. Brought back by a passing bell-boy,
I shall now keep a tighter rein.
But when one first breathes the air of California, there is a curious
exaltation and excitement, which leads on irresistibly. This is often
followed by a natural depression, sleepiness, and reaction. But that
view never changes, and I know you will say the same. A florid,
effervescent, rhapsodical style seems irresistible. One man of
uncommon business ability and particularly level head caught the spirit
of the place, and wrote that "the most practical and unpoetical minds,

too, come here and go away, as they afterward gingerly admit, carrying
with them the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold and crimson
upon cloud, sea, and mountain; of violet promontories, sails, and
lighthouses etched against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight
silvering breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands
shimmering in sun-lit haze; of sunrises with crowns of glory chasing
the vapory, fleece-like shadows from the wet, irridescent beach, and
silhouetting the fishermen's sails in the opalescent tints of a glassy sea."
Some temperaments may not be affected at all. But the first morning I
felt like leaping a five-barred fence, and the next like lying down
anywhere and sleeping indefinitely. I met a distinguished Boston artist
recently, who had just arrived. The day was superb. He seemed in a
semi-delirium of ecstasy over everything. His face glowed, his eyes
shone, his hands were full of flowers. He said, "My heart jumps so I'm
really afraid it will jump out of my body." The next morning he was
wholly subdued. It had poured all night, and the contrast was
depressing. A six-footer from Albany was in the sleepy state. "If I don't
pull out soon," he said, "I shall be bedridden. I want to sleep after
breakfast, or bowling, or bath, or my ride or dinner, and really long to
go to bed by nine."
There has probably been more fine writing and florid rhetoric about
California than any other State in the Union.
The Hotel del Coronado is a mammoth hostelry, yet homelike in every
part, built in a rectangle with inner court, adorned with trees, flowers,
vines, and a fountain encircled by callas; color, pure white, roofs and
chimneys red; prevailing woods, oak, ash, pine, and redwood.
All around the inner court a series of suites of rooms, each with its own
bath and corner sitting-room--literally "a linkèd suiteness long drawn
out." It is one eighth of a mile from my bedroom to my seat in the
dining-room, so that lazy people are obliged to take daily
constitutionals whether they want to or not, sighing midway for trolley
accommodations. The dining-room may safely be called roomy, as it
seats a thousand guests, and your dearest friends could not be
recognized at the extreme end. Yet there is no dreary stretch or

caravansary effect, and to-day every seat is filled, and a dozen tourists
waiting at the door.
Every recreation of city or country is found in this little world: thirty
billiard-tables, pool, bowling, tennis, polo, bathing (where bucking
barrel-horses and toboggan slides, fat men who produce tidal waves,
and tiny boys who do the heroic as sliders and divers, make fun for the
spectators), hunting, fishing, yachting, rowing, riding to hounds, rabbit
hunts, pigeon shoot, shooting-galleries, driving, coaching, cards,
theatre, ballroom, lectures, minstrels, exhibitions of the Mammoth and
Minute from Yosemite with the stereopticon, to Pacific sea-mosses, the
ostrich farm, the museum or maze for a morning hour, dressing or
undressing for evening display, watching the collection of human
beings who throng everywhere with a critical or humorous eye, finding
as much variety as on Broadway or Tremont Street; dancing-classes for
children; a chaperon and a master of ceremonies for grown folks; a
walk or drive twelve miles long on a smooth beach at low tide, not
forgetting the "dark room" for kodak and camera f--amateurs.
You see many athletic, fine-looking men, who ride daringly and ride to
kill. Once a week the centre of the office is filled with game: rabbits,
quail, snipe, ducks, etc., everything here--but an undertaker. And old
Ocean eternally booming (the only permanent boom I know of in
Southern California).
And that is what you see and hear at the Hotel del Coronado. The
summer climate is better than the winter--never too warm for comfort,
the mercury never moving