Imperial Valley press., 1916-12-27

1t was only after l came away from
California, a few years ago, that I
realized in my provincial heart that
she does not mean to all the world
what she means to us who love her and
belong to her, writes Kathleen Norris
in the American Magazine.
There are Kentuckians, for exam
pie, and Texans, and even
Europeans, who do not keenly regret
the accident of birth that prevents
them from claiming her smote me with
a naive and puzzled surprise. Even
now the very name, the very word
California; falls upon my ears with
an exquisite appeal it is like a strain
Of familiar and poignantly touching
music. l can hear it acress the noisi-
est tea room, or distinguish it under
the murmuring darkness of the the
atre. The motor licenses, with the lit
tie bear guarding the number, look
like friendly faces when one meets
them on eastern roadways, and when
the railroad companies plaster fences
with the alluring suggestion Give
Days and Seventy Dollars to Califor-
nian' l feel tug at my heart.
And Fifth avenue vanishes, and the
evergreen fields, and the painting,
moist heat, and the piled snow. 1t is
California again, with the burned hills
lying like leopards under the \blue,
soft sky, and gulls wheeling and cry
ing over the buoyant waters of the
bay, and tar-weed and poppies tang
ling the alfalfa, and scenting the
warm, dry air. 1t is California, where
three hundred days a year are picnic
days. and where the sunshine ever
row is falling unnoticed in golden
spokes through miles Of stately virgin
redwoods, and where roses and daisies
and heliotrope and wallflowers and
stock and potted pansies and prim-
roses, and hundred others, are
nassed on the curb about Lotta's foun-
tain, waiting for you to buy them
at 10 cents or Is cents great arm
ful-and carry them home.
We are raised on superlatives, we
second generation Californians. Our
fathers fought a bitter fight to reach
the farthest frontier and they loved
it because they suffered for it.
Whether they came "around the Horn"
in sailing vessels, or across the end
less prairies in the familiar hooped,
dusty wagons, they learned the worth
Of their home before they found it.
My own grandmother, with my moth
er at her breast, looked up through
the velvet dark of night, through the
same hooped covering, and watched
the camfires of hostile Indians on
the hills. Ringleted, crinolined, visit
ful and 18, she said goodbye to the
world she knew, at Saint Joe," and
left it forever behind her. To the
erd of her life, she liked to talk Of
"Southe'n" hospitality, of men who
rode dashing horses and wore white,
Of orderly gardens packed with bloom,
Ct cool great rooms full Of silence
and tree shadows, and the quiet step
ping of brown-skinned maids.
Her own fate was the fate of Cali
fornia. She sat in the jolting wagon,
beside another woman in the party,
when baby was born. She saw q
priceless team of cattle fall upon an
unexpected water hole and drink them
selves to death. She knew one of the
company, a girl, gently raised like
herself, who was widowed, and who
left the scalped body of her young
husband behind her on the plains. And
his brother took her, without benefit
cf clergy, and because she had young
children and nedeed man.
This was after the days Of the Span
ish sheep ranches, and after the days
of the padres. But there were Indi-
ans, and wolves, and floods in Cali
folnia, when they found it. She
slept in rough bed whose leg bore
notch, for which the once white and
ringed hand felt often during the