A Truthful Woman in Southern California | Page 5

in a rambling bungalow consisting of three small cottages moved from different points and made into one. He believes in California for "health, pleasure, and residence." It is a rare privilege to listen to his conversation, sitting by his open fire or at his library table, or when he is entertaining friends at dinner.
So ends my sketch of Coronado. Coronado! What a perfect word! Musical, euphonious, regal, "the crowned"! The name of the governor of New Galicia, and captain-general of the Spanish army, sent forth in 1540 in search of the seven cities of Cibola. General J. H. Simpson, U. S. A., has written a valuable monograph on "Coronado's March," which can be found in the Smithsonian Report for 1869.
I intend to avoid statistics and history on the one side, and extravagant eulogy on the other.
Now we will say good-by to our new friends, take one more look at Point Loma, and cross the ferry to San Diego.
CHAPTER III.
SAN DIEGO.
"The truly magnificent, and--with reason--famous port of San Diego."--From the first letter of Father Junipero in Alto California.
Fifteen cents for motor, ferry, and car will take you to Hotel Florence, on the heights overlooking the bay, where I advise you to stop. The Horton House is on an open, sunny site, and is frequented by "transients" and business men of moderate means. The Brewster is a first-class hotel, with excellent table. The Florence is not a large boarding-house or family hotel, but open for all. It has a friendly, homelike atmosphere, without the exactions of an ultra-fashionable resort. The maximum January temperature is seventy-four degrees, while that of July is seventy-nine degrees, and invalid guests at this house wear the same weight clothing in summer that they do in winter. The rooms of this house are all sunny, and each has a charming ocean or mountain view. It is easy to get there; hard to go away. Arriving from Coronado Beach, I was reminded of the Frenchman who married a quiet little home body after a desperate flirtation with a brilliant society queen full of tyrannical whims and capricious demands. When this was commented on as surprising, he explained that after playing with a squirrel one likes to take a cat in his lap. Really, it is so restful that the building suggests a big yellow tabby purring sleepily in the sunshine. I sat on the veranda, or piazza, taking a sun-bath, in a happy dream or doze, until the condition of nirvana was almost attained. What day of the week was it? And the season? Who could tell? And who cares? Certainly no one has the energy to decide it. Last year, going there to spend one day, I remained for five weeks, hypnotized by my environments--beguiled, deluded, unconscious of the flight of time, serenely happy. Many come for a season, and wake up after five or six years to find it is now their home. "There seems to exist in this country a something which cheats the senses; whether it be in the air, the sunshine, or in the ocean breeze, or in all three combined, I cannot say. Certainly the climate is not the home-made common-sense article of the anti-Rocky Mountain States; and unreality is thrown round life--all walk and work in a dream."
At Coronado Beach one rushes out after breakfast for an all-day excursion or morning tramp; here one sits and sits, always intending to go somewhere or do something, until the pile of unanswered letters accumulates and the projected trips weary one in a dim perspective. It is all so beautiful, so new, so wonderful! San Diego is the Naples of America, with the San Jacinto Mountains for a background and the blue sunlit bay to gaze upon, and one of the finest harbors in the world. Yet with all this, few have the energy even to go a-fishing.
Now, as a truthful "tourist," I must admit that in the winter there are many days when the sun does not shine, and the rainy season is not altogether cheerful for the invalid and the stranger. Sunshine, glorious golden sunshine, is what we want all the time; but we do not get it. I noticed that during the heavy rains the invalids retired to their rooms, overcome by the chill and dampness, and some were seriously ill. But then they would have been in their graves if they had remained in the East. There are many charming people residing in San Diego, well, happy, useful, who know they can never safely return to their old homes.
There has been such a rosy glamour thrown over southern California by enthusiastic romancers that many are disappointed when they fail to find an absolute Paradise.
Humboldt said of California: "The sky is constantly serene and of a deep blue, and without a cloud;