sured, of----Whoa there! Hello! This to my runaway
steeds, Imagination and Sentiment. Brought back by a passing bell-boy, I
shall now keep a tighter rein.

But when one first breathes the air of California, there is a curious
exaltation and excitement, which leads on irresistibly. This is often
followed by a natural depression, sleepiness, and reaction. But that
view never changes, and I know you will say the same. A florid,
effervescent, rhapsodical style seems irresistible. One man of uncommon
business ability and particularly level head caught the spirit of the
place, and wrote that "the most practical and unpoetical minds, too,
come here and go away, as they afterward gingerly admit, carrying with
them the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold and crimson upon cloud,
sea, and mountain; of violet promontories, sails, and lighthouses
etched against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight silvering
breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands shimmering in
sun-lit haze; of sunrises with crowns of glory chasing the vapory,
fleece-like shadows from the wet, irridescent beach, and silhouetting
the fishermen's sails in the opalescent tints of a glassy sea."

Some temperaments may not be affected at all. But the first morning I
felt like leaping a five-barred fence, and the next like lying down
anywhere and sleeping indefinitely. I met a distinguished Boston artist
recently, who had just arrived. The day was superb. He seemed in a
semi-delirium of ecstasy over everything. His face glowed, his eyes
shone, his hands were full of flowers. He said, "My heart jumps so I'm
really afraid it will jump out of my body." The next morning he was
wholly subdued. It had poured all night, and the contrast was
depressing. A six-footer from Albany was in the sleepy state. "If I
don't pull out soon," he said, "I shall be bedridden. I want to sleep
after breakfast, or bowling, or bath, or my ride or dinner, and really
long to go to bed by nine."

There has probably been more fine writing and florid rhetoric about
California than any other State in the Union.

The Hotel del Coronado is a mammoth hostelry, yet homelike in every
part, built in a rectangle with inner court, adorned with trees,
flowers, vines, and a fountain encircled by callas; color, pure white,
roofs and chimneys red; prevailing woods, oak, ash, pine, and redwood.

All around the inner court a series of suites of rooms, each with its
own bath and corner sitt