The California Birthday Book | Page 9

hills of San Francisco to the south. In the suburbs coyotes still stole in and robbed hen roosts by night.
WILL IRWIN,?in The City That Was.
FEBRUARY 27.
DAWN ON MOUNT TAMALPAIS.
A cloudless heaven is bending o'er us,?The dawn is lighting the linn and lea;?Island and headland and bay before us,?And, dim in the distance, the heaving sea.?The Farallon light is faintly flashing,?The birds are wheeling in fitful flocks,?The coast-line brightens, the waves are dashing?And tossing their spray on the Lobos rocks.?The Heralds of Morn in the east are glowing?And boldly lifting the veil of night;?Whitney and Shasta are bravely showing?Their crowns of snow in the morning light.?The town is stirring with faint commotion,?In all its highways it throbs and thrills;?We greet you! Queen of the Western Ocean,?As you wake to life on your hundred hills.?The forts salute, and the flags are streaming?From ships at anchor in cove and strait;?O'er the mountain tops, in splendor beaming,?The sun looks down on the Golden Gate.
LUCIUS HARWOOD FOOTE.
FEBRUARY 28.
ENOUGH.
When my calm majestic mountains are piled white and high?Against the perfect rose-tints of a living sunrise sky,?I can resign the dearest wish without a single sigh,?And let the whole world's restlessness pass all unheeded by.
MARY RUSSELL MILLS.
FEBRUARY 29.
MARSHALL SAUNDERS ON SAN FRANCISCO.
How we all love a city that we have once contemplated making our home! Such a city to me is San Francisco, and but for unavoidable duties elsewhere, I would be there today. I loved that bright, beautiful city, and even the mention of its name sends my blood bounding more quickly through my veins. That might have been my city, and I therefore rejoice in its prosperity. I am distressed when calamity overtakes it--I never lose faith in its ultimate success. The heart of the city is sound. It has always been sound, even in the early days when a ring of corrupt adventurers would have salted the city of the blessed herb with an unsavory reputation, but for the care of staunch and courageous protectors at the heart of it.
San Francisco is not the back door of the continent. San Francisco is the front door. Every ship sailing out of its magnificent bay to the Orient, proclaims this fact. San Francisco will one day lead the continent. A city that cares for its poor and helpless, its children and dumb animals, that encourages art and learning, and never wearies in its prosecution of evil-doers--that city will eventually emerge triumphant from every cloud of evil report. Long live the dear city by the Golden Gate!
MARSHALL SAUNDERS, July, 1909.
"Senor Barrow, I congratulate you," Morale said, in his native tongue. "A woman who cannot be won away by passion or by chance, is a woman of gold."
GERTRUDE B. MILLARD,?in On the Ciudad Road, The Newsletter, Jan., 1899.
AT THE PRESIDIO OF SAN FRANCISCO.
The rose and honey-suckle here entwine?In lovely comradeship their am'rous arms;?Here grasses spread their undecaying charms.?And every wall is eloquent with vine;?Far-reaching avenues make beckoning sign,?And as we stroll along their tree-lined way,?The songster trills his rapture-breathing lay?From where he finds inviolable shrine.?And yet, within this beauty-haunted place?War keeps his dreadful engines at command.?With scarce a smile upon his frowning face,?And ever ready, unrelaxing hand ...?We start to see, when dreaming in these bowers,?A tiger sleeping on a bed of flowers.
EDWARD ROBESON TAYLOR,?in Moods and Other Verse.
MARCH 1.
THE CITY'S VOICE.
A mighty undertone of mingled sound;?The cadent tumult rising from a throng?Of urban workers, blending in a song?Of greater life that makes the pulses bound.?The whirr of turning wheels, the hammers' ring?The noise of traffic and the tread of men,?The viol's sigh, the scratching of a pen--?All to a vibrant Whole their echoes fling.?Hark to the City's voice; it tells a tale?Of triumphs and defeats, of joy and woe,?The lover's tryst, the challenge of a foe,?A dying gasp, a new-born infant's wail.?The pulse-beats of a million hearts combined,?Reverberating in a rhythmic thrill--?A vital message that is never still--?A sweeping, cosmic chorus, unconfined.
LOUIS J. STELLMANN,?in San Francisco Town Talk, December 6, 1902.
MARCH 2.
From his windows on Russian Hill one saw always something strange and suggestive creeping through the mists of the bay. It would be a South Sea Island brig, bringing in copra, to take out cottons and idols; a Chinese junk after sharks' livers; an old whaler, which seemed to drip oil, home from a year of cruising in the Arctic. Even the tramp windjammers were deep-chested craft, capable of rounding the Horn or of circumnavigating the globe; and they came in streaked and picturesque from their long voyaging.
WILL IRWIN,?in The City That Was.
MARCH 3.
WILD HONEY.
The swarms that escape from their careless owners have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes. Most of them make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees that line the banks of the rivers,