stamped on stationery and menu
cards, and has gone the world over in his volume "Our Italy," and no one
ever visits this spot who has not made the phrase his own. To me it
deserves a stronger word, or series of words. We say a pretty girl has a
"unique" way of dressing her hair, or an author a "unique" way of
putting things.

But as I look out of my window this glorious morning, and watch the
triple line of foaming waves breaking on the long beach, a silver sickle
in the sunshine; the broad expanse of the Pacific, with distant sails
looking like butterflies apoise; Point Loma grandly guarding the right,
and farther back the mountain view, where snowy peaks can just be
discerned over the nearer ranges; the quiet beauty of the grounds below,
where borders and ovals and beds of marguerites contrast prettily with
long lines and curves of the brilliant marigolds; grass, trees, and
hedges green as June--a view which embraces the palm and the pine, the
ocean and lofty mountains, cultivated gardens and rocky wastes, as I see
all this, I for one moment forget "unique" and exclaim, "How bold,
magnificent, and unrivalled!" Give me a new and fitting adjective to
describe what I see. Our best descriptive adjectives are so recklessly
used in daily life over minute matters, that absolutely nothing is left
for this rare combination.

As a daughter of New Hampshire in this farthest corner of the southwest,
my mind crosses the continent to the remote northeast and the great
Stone Face of the Franconia Mountains. Chiselled by an Almighty hand,
its rugged brow seamed by the centuries, its features scarred by the
storms of ages, gazing out over the broad land, where centre the hopes
of the human race, who can forget that face, sad with the mysteries of
pain and sorrow, yet inspiring with its rugged determination, and at
times softened with the touch of sunlit hope?

Point Loma has something of the same sphinx-like grandeur, with its long
bold promontory stretching out into the western waters. These two seem
to be keeping watch and ward over mountain and sea: each appropriate in
its place and equally impressive. There the stern prophet surveying the
home of great beginnings, the cradle of creative energy; and here, its
counterpart, a mighty recumbent lion, its dreamy, peaceful gaze turned
with confidence out over the wide Pacific to the setting sun, with
assurance of ultimate success, a pledge of aspirations satisfied, of
achievements as