The San Francisco call., 1896-04-19
A CALIFORNIA IDYL.

Among the idyls OF Scottish life told by
the author of sThe Bonnie Brier Bush"
for the enjoyment of all who delight sin
fair passions and bouptiful pities and loves
ithout stain,' there is none which
awakens a more responsive chord in the
Heart of the reader than that which tells the
story how the farmers of Drumtochty, in
genuine kindliness, went forth to plow the
fields of a neighbor who was too sick to
plow them for. himself. This story, told
with more than ordinary grace, has given
the world glimpse into the true heart of
Scotland and revealed the life of the plain
people there under one of its finest aspects.
We have not yet had that faithful chron-
icling of the minor events of life in Cali
fornia that has been given to those of
Scotland, and consequently the ways of the
world here seem harder and neighbors less
kindly than they are in that land whose
every gentle instinct has been made the
theme of song and story by men of genius
and of worth. There are abundant evil
dences, however, that all the finer facts of
life are here and that only the coming of
the true writer is needed to make it known
to the world that California has her idyls
not less lovely than those of the land of
Burns and Scott.
While in the hurry of things and the
great events of the day the press largely
overlooks these little ''unremembered acts
of kindness that make the tenor of good
mems hves," it is fortunate that here and
there among the country weeklies there is
an editor with an eye keen enough to see
them, an instinct fine enough to value
han or,A
sufficient to give them space in
the records of his paper. Editor Edes
of the Morgan Hill Sun is one of these.
He not only makes his paper one of the
best in the country considering the size of
the community that supports it, but he
makes it true chronicle of the life of peo-
pie there, and accordingly shows that
neighborhood now and again under as
poets as idyllic and Arcadian as any that
have been revealed to us since the days
when Greece was young and the golden
age prevailed.
In the course Of these weekly chronicles
the San has recorded of Morgan Hill an
event exactly similar to that which makes
so grateful an idyl when told of Drum
tochty. A party of orchardists in that
district went forth with their teams and as
an act of neighborly goodwill plowed the
ten-acre orchard of their sick neighbor, and
then, not weary of well-doing, went fur
ther and plowed five acres for one man
and six for another who happened to be
behind in their work.
The California incident is more notable
than the Scottish one, because the people
OF Morgan Hill have not been lifelong
neignbors and old schoolmates bound .by
ties of kinship and marriage as were those
OF Drumtochty. They have known one
another but few years. The orchards
planted when the town was founded
have not yet ripened their first fruits.
Nevertheless the community itself has
already ripened the best fruits of So
cial life, as is shown by this Incl
dent. There is one moral to the sub
ject which should not be overlooked. If
out of simple deeds of this kind Scottish
writer's can make tales that are read the
wide world over, surely California writer's
can find in similar themes an opportunity
to give the outsiders truer conception of
California life than by depicting it as
made up of the rough scrambles of the
mining camps and the coarse tragedies of
evil natures. California should be known
not only as the land of golden sunshine,
fruits and mines, but of golden hearts as