The Smiling Hill-Top | Page 7

up and come to terms. At last the matter was settled. I abandoned my last five-dollar ditch, thinking that the relief of seeing the last of Poppy would be cheap at the price. There were four of us, and we would not hesitate to pay two dollars each for theatre tickets, which would be eight dollars, so really I was saving money.
A nice little girl with flaxen pigtails brought her father's check. She and her brother tied Poppy behind their buggy and slowly disappeared down the hill. There was the flutter of a handkerchief from the other side of the canyon, and that was all.
In the words of that disturbing telegram:
"Salve atque vale."

[Illustration]
GARDENERS
"Venite agile, barchetta mia Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!"
accompanied by the enchanting fragrance of burning sage-brush, is wafted up to my sleeping-porch, and I know that Signor Constantino Garibaldi is early at work clearing the canyon side so that our Matilija poppies shall not be crowded out by the wild. It is a pleasant awakening to a pleasant world as the light morning mist melts away from a bay as "bright and soft and bloomin' blue" as any Kipling ever saw. It seems almost too good to be true, that in a perfect Italian setting we should have stumbled on an Italian gardener, who whistles Verdi as he works. True, he doesn't know the flowers by name, and in his hands a pair of clippers are as fatal as the shears in the hands of Atropos, but he is in the picture. When I see gardeners pruning I realize that that lady of destiny shows wonderful restraint about our threads of fate--the temptation to snip seems so irresistible.
Signor Garibaldi is a retired wine merchant driven out-of-doors by illness, a most courteous and sensitive soul, with a talent for letter-writing that is alone worth all the plumbago blossoms that he cut away last year. The following letter was written to J---- while Garibaldi was in charge of our hill-top, the bareness of which we strove to cover with wild flowers until we could make just the kind of garden we wanted:
March 15.
DEAR SIR:
The last time I had the pleasure of see you in your place, Villa Collina Ridente, you exclaimed with a melancholic voice, "Only poppies and mignonette came out of the wild flower seeds." "So it is," said I in the same tune of voice. Time proved we was both wrong; many other flowers made their retarded appearance, so deserving the name of wild flower garden....
Your place (pardon me as I am not a violet) could look better, also could look worse; consequently I consider myself entitled to be placed between hell and paradise--to have things as one wishes is an insolvable problem--that era has not come yet.
Many people come over to the Smiling hills, some think it is not necessary to go any farther to collect flower to make a bouquet. With forced gentle manner I reproached some of them, ordering to observe the rule, "vedere e non toccare." It go in force while I am present, not so in my absence. Those that made proverbs, their names ought to be immortal. Here for one, "When the cat is gone, the rats dance." How much true is in the Say. Every visitor like the place profane or not profane in artistic matter.
A glorious rain came last night to the great content of the farmers and gardeners--others not so. While I am writing from my Observatorio I can't see any indication of stopping. I don't think it will rain as much as when we had the universal deluge, but if the cause of said deluge was in order to get a better generation, it may. I don't think the actual generation is better than it was the anti-deluge, pardon me if you can't digest what I say. I am a pessimist to the superlative grade, and it is not without reason that I say so. I had sad experience with the World. Thank God for having doted me with a generous dose of philosophic! Swimming against the tide, not me, not such a fool I am!
Here is another pardon that I have to ask and it is to take the liberty of decorate the Smiling hill with the American flag. La Bandiera Stellata (note: I am not an American legally, no; to say I renounce to my country, impossible, but I am an American by heart if U. Sam can use me. I was not trained to be a soldier, but in matter of shooting very seldom I fail to get a rabbit when I want it, more so lately that a box of shells from 60 cents jumped to $1.00). As a rule the ridents colline are very monotonous, but when I am home, more so the Sunday,