The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1878-05-09
A Poetic Tribute to the Pacific Coast.

The climate of the Coast stimulates
men and women like wine. 1t gives
them courage that is not Dutch but
weather, and confidence that is not con-
ceit but intoxication. 1t quickens the
pulse and the step and the brain. Il
sends them wild for pleasurable excite
ment. 1t strengthens the passions. 1t
keeps every body under whip aud spur.
1t makes him impatient of patience.
You live ten years in five, and it is scored
against you. 1t is a debt with inevita-
BILE payment. A man who has not at
tanned his mental growth can shoot up
for ten years like a rocket. But alas,
when he comes down, it is sudden,
abrupt, like ssthe stick" A man who
has reached his law of limitation can
migrate to California, and flash up bril-
liantly little longer.
Watch bricklayers, brisk in their mo-
tions as busy ants. Those men at
the East would move with the delibera-
ton of an old hall-clock pendulum with
the weights just running down. 1t is
the climate. Seventy miles in twenty
four hours at the East, over 6. satin road
in December, is a Jehu of a
drive. Here sixty miles before sun
set hurts nobody. Your horse
has been drinking California air. He
will do his best, or die a-trying. But
he will not last, any more than his mas
ter. He will want an extra feed. The
driver will want an extra drink. He
can not be a cameleon. He can not live
forever on air. He looks in tumbler
for astimulant. By and by he flickers,
and it is "out, brief candle!' 1t is the
climate. It sharpens the appetite.
Boys and girls are born with percus-
sion caps on. Touch them and they
explode. They ripen early, in this sun
and tonic air, into manhood and wom-
anhood. You can see mothers of IA,
and see no marvel. About 10000 .pu-
pills are enrolled in the Sc public schools
of San Francisco, and 1000 in the 100
private schools and colleges. 1t is quite
as difficult to govern the young human
California animal as it is to catch up
globule of quicksilver from marble ia
BILE with a thumb and finger. Is it a
boy? He shouts, runs, leaps, struggles,
just as his pulse beats-because he can
not stop it. He has opinions, though
his beard is peachy down. He is pos
tive as trip-hammer. Is it a girl? She
is as volatile as Cologne, her voice is
joyous, her step dancers, her laugh
contagious. She is as dashing as yacht
in white cap breeze. ,-
l live neighbor to the Lincoln School,
as fine a structure as you will find any
where, and set in the midst of semi
tropical garden. You should see the
twelve hundred boys and girls sslet outn
at noon, and then let themselves out.
Swallows coursing a miI-pond; ephem-
era dancing in sunbeams; bees swarm
ing when the hive is full; happy as
speckled trout in the spring brooks
Izaak Walton dead and the anglers gone
away; not boisterous, but breezy; not
rude, but effervescent. You would not
be surprised if the mercury in their
veins should distance the mercury in the
thermometer and stand at 10 degrees.
Quick-eyed, quick footed, quick-witted,
they are forever on 'sspree,' they ex-
ult in state of chronic climate intoxi
cation. They are languid as lizards,
clumsy as humming-birds, aud idle as
beavers in high water. Laziness is tried
out of you and blown out of you by
eloudless suns and winds.
The weather is as varied in California
as the mind of desultory man. Three
hundred heroes at the pass of Thermo-
pyla withstood hostile world. Ex-
Guiding those that wear wool, there are
as many weathers on the Pacific Slope.
When the King of Dahomey and an Are
tic bear can breakfast together in the
morning, and each reach his own eli
mate before decent Puritan bedtime
without leaving the State, the man who
fails to be suited knows too little
to be happy, and the bear
should be eaten by the ssforty chill
dren" who alluded to the Prophets
capillary restitution. All the zones
come to California for rehearsal, and
then they go home to delight Hotten-
tots and Laplanders, elder ducks and
and all the sons of Shem,
Ham and Japheth.
Nowhere in America are the seasons
so neighborly as in California. The
improperly of winter sitting in the lap
OF spring has made a public scandal, but
when September is on whispering terms
with May, and January borrows
June's clothes, and July gives all
her rainbows to November, it is high
time to talk! The winter is in the sum
mer and the spring is in the winter, and
harvest is in seed-time, and autumn is
lost out of the calendar altogether; and
The siroccos blow from the north and
The cold winds from the south, and you'll
must sail by the almanac or lose your
and get lost in the weather.
The effect of this loose state of socie-
y among the seasons is delightfully."-
You never saw such igno- |
.Qnf rncoc IL, al xroY,y. 1.fa