The California Birthday Book | Page 4

the roses are in perpetual bloom. The vines are laden with clustered grapes, the peach and the apricot trees bend under their loads of luscious fruit, the milch cows yield their creamy milk, the honey-bees laying in their stores of sweet spoil, the balmy air breathes fragrance, the drowsy hum of life is the music of peace.
EDMUND MITCHELL,?in Only a Nigger.
JANUARY 19.
CALIFORNIA SONG.
DEDICATED TO GEORGE WHARTON JAMES.
Proud are we to own us thine,?Land of Song and Land of Story,?All thy glory?Round our heart-hopes we entwine,?In our souls thy fame enshrine,?California!
Dear to us thy mystic name,?Leal-land; Love-land; Land of Might,?We would write?On the walls of Years thy fame,?With thy love a world inflame,?California!
Dear to us thy maiden grace,?Dear thy queenly Motherhood,?Fain we would?Keep the sun-smiles on thy face,?Worthy live of thy strong Race,?California!
Land of Beauty! Blossom-land!?Land of Heroes, Saints and Sages,?Let the Ages?Witness all thou canst command?From each loyal heart and hand,?California!
S.A.S.H.
JANUARY 20.
I always appreciate things as I go along, for no knowing whether you'll ever go the same way twice in this world.
ALBERTA LAWRENCE,?in The Travels of Phoebe Ann.
JANUARY 21.
MOUNT TAMALPAIS.
Home of the elements--where battling bands?Of clouds and winds the rocks defy--?Mute yet great, old Tamalpais stands?Outlined against the rosy sky.?His darkened form uprising there commands?The country round, and every eye?From lesser hills he strangely seems to draw?With lifted glance that speaks of wonder and of awe.?It is the awe that makes us reverence show?To men of might who proudly tower?Above their fellow-men; the glance that we bestow?On one whose native force and power?Have lifted him above the race below--?The pigmy mortals of an hour--?We almost bend the knee and bow the head?To the mighty force that marks his kingly tread.
MRS. PHILIP VERRILL MICHELS,?in Readings from the California Poets.
JANUARY 22.
Broadly speaking, California is the only elective State. Its people are not here because their mothers happened to be here at the time; not as refugees; not as ne'er-do-wells, drifting to do no better; not even, in bulk, as joining the scrimmage for more money. They have come by deliberate choice, and a larger proportion of them, and more single-heartedly, for home's sake than in any other as large migration on record.
CHARLES F. LUMMIS,?in _The Right Hand of the Continent, Out West,?August_, 1902.
JANUARY 23.
Is there any kind of climate,?Any scene for painter's eye,?The Almighty hath not crowded?'Neath our California sky??Is there any fruit or flower,?Any gem or jewel old,?Any wonder of creation?This Garden doth not hold--?From the tiny midget blossom?To the grand Sequoia high,?With its roots in God's own country?And its top in God's own sky?
FRED EMERSON BROOKS,?in Old Abe and Other Poems.
JANUARY 24.
A MENDOCINO MEMORY.
I climbed the canyon to a river-head,?And looking backward saw a splendor spread.?Miles beyond miles, of every kingly hue?And trembling tint the looms of Arras knew--?A flowery pomp as of the dying day,?A splendor where a god might take his way.

It was the brink of night and everywhere?Tall redwoods spread their filmy tops in air;?Huge trunks, like shadows upon shadow cast,?Pillared the under twilight, vague and vast.

Lightly I broke green branches for a bed,?And gathered ferns, a pillow for my head.?And what to this were kingly chambers worth--?Sleeping, an ant, upon the sheltering earth.
EDWIN MARKHAM,?in Lincoln and Other Poems.
JANUARY 25.
CALIFORNIA.
Queen of the Coast, she stands here emerald-crowned,?Waiting her ships that sail in from the sea,?Fairer than all the western world to me,?Is this young Goddess whom the years have found?Ocean and land, with riches rare and sweet.?Loyally bring their treasures to her feet;?In her brave arms she holds with proud content?The varied plenty of a continent;?In her fair face, and in her dreaming eyes,?Shines the bright promise of her destinies;?Winds kiss her cheek, and fret the restless tides,?She in their truth with faith divine confides,?Watching the course of empire's brilliant fate,?She looks serenely through the Golden Gate.
ANNA MORRISON REED.
JANUARY 26.
Here was our first (and still largest) national romance, the first wild-flower of mystery, the first fierce passion of an uncommonly hard-fisted youth. To this day it persists the only glamour between the covers of our geography. For more than fifty years its only name has been a witchcraft, and its spell is stronger now than ever, as shall be coolly demonstrated. This has meant something in the psychology of so unfanciful a race. The flowering of imagination is no trivial incident, whether in one farm boy's life or in a people's. It may be outgrown, and so much as forgotten; but it shall never again be as if it had never been. Without just that flower we should not have just this fruit.
CHARLES F. LUMMIS,?in Out West, June, 1892.
JANUARY 27.
As time goes on its endless course, environment is sure to crystallize the American nation. Its varying elements will become unified and the weeding out process will probably leave the finest human product ever known. The color,