A Truthful Woman in Southern California | Page 4

the nervous invalids who only feel well on fine days and complain unreasonably.
Ten inches is the average needed just here. Rain is rainy and wet weather is wet, but the ground dries as soon as the pelting shower is over. I do not find the raw, searching dampness of our Eastern seashore resorts. Here we are said to have "dry fogs" and an ideal marine atmosphere, but it was too cold for comfort during the March rains for those not in robust health.
As I sit in the upper gallery and watch the throng issuing from the dining-room, I make a nice and unerring social distinction between the Toothpick Brigade who leave the table with the final mouthful semi-masticated, and those who have an air of finished contentment.
The orchestra is unusually good, giving choice selections admirably executed. I have not decided whether music at meals is a blessing or otherwise. If sad, it seems a mockery; if gay, an interruption. For one extremely sensitive to time and tune it is difficult to eat to slow measures. And when the steak is tough and a galop is going on above, it is hard to keep up.
Among the many fleeting impressions of faces and friends here, one or two stand out clearly and indelibly--stars of the first magnitude in the nebul?--as dear Grandma Wade from Chicago, the most attractive old lady I ever met: eighty-three years old, with a firm step, rotund figure, and sweet, unruffled face, crowned with the softest snow-white curls, on which rests an artistic cap trimmed with ribbons of blue or delicate heliotrope, and small artificial flowers to match. I have known several interesting octogenarians, but never one that surpassed her in loveliness, wit, and positive jollity. Her spontaneous fun is better than the labored efforts of many a famous humorist.
She still has her ardent admirers among men as well as women, and now and then receives an earnest proposal from some lonely old fellow.
The last of these aged lovers, when refused and relegated to the position of a brother, urged her to reconsider this important matter, making it a subject of prayer. But she quietly said, "I'm not going to bother the Lord with questions I can answer myself." When choked by a bread-crumb at table, she said to the frightened waiter, as soon as she had regained her breath, "Never mind, if that did go down the wrong way, a great many good things have gone down the right way this winter."
She is invariably cheerful, and when parting with her son for the winter she said, "Well, John, I want to know before I go just what you have left me in your will!" which little joke changed a tear into a smile.
Even when ill she is still bright and hopeful, so that a friend exclaimed, "Grandma, I do believe you would laugh if you were dying;" and she replied, "Well, so many folks go to the Lord with a long face, I guess He will be glad to see one come in smiling."
Oh, how repulsive the artificial bloom, the cosmetics and hair-dyes which make old age a horror, compared with her natural beauty! God bless and keep dear Grandma Wade!
Little "Ted" is another character and favorite, and his letter to his nurse in New York gives a good idea of how the place affects a bright, impressionable child.
"My dear Julia: It is a dummy near the hotel and it takes five days to come here and there is an island right beyond the boat house and they have a pigeon shoot every week. And there is six hundred people here Julia, one hundred and fifty came yesterday.
"There is a mountin across the river and a house very far away by itself, Julia. I play in the sand every day of my life, and I take swimming lessons and I have two oranges. California is the biggest world in the country and there is a tree very, very far away. Julia it is a puzzle walk near the hotel, Rose and me went all through it and Julia, we got our way out easy."
He has it all. All the trees are cultivated here, so I looked round for the one Ted spoke of, and find it lights up at night and revolves for the aid of the mariners. I think that all Californians echo his sentiment that "California is the biggest world in the country"; and compared with the hard work of the New England farmers, what is the cultivation of orchards but playing in the sand with golden oranges? Some one says that Californians "irrigate, cultivate, and exaggerate."
Charles Nordhoff, the veteran journalist and author, lives within sight of the hotel (which he pronounces the most perfect and charming hotel he knows of in Europe or America),