g I wore fitted me any
longer.

I shall never commit that error again. I know better now. If I were a
condemned criminal about to die on a gallows at the state penitentiary,
I would make the customary announcement touching on my intention of
going straight to Heaven--condemned criminals never seem to have any
doubt on that point--and then in conclusion I would add that after
Southern California, I knew I wouldn't care for the climate Up There.
Then I would step serenely off into eternity, secure in the belief that,
no matter how heinous my crime might have been, all the local papers
would give me nice obituary notices.

I'd be absolutely sure of the papers, because the papers are the last to
concede that there ever was or ever will be a flaw in the climate
anywhere. In a certain city out on the Coast there is one paper that
refuses even to admit that a human being can actually expire while
breathing the air of Southern California. It won't go so far as to say
that anybody has died--"passed away" is the term used. You read in its
columns that Medulla Oblongata, the Mexican who was kicked in the head
by a mule last Sunday afternoon, has passed away at the city hospital;
or that, during yesterday's misunderstanding in Chinatown between the
Bing Bangs and the Ok Louies, two Tong men were shot and cut in such a
manner that they practically passed away on the spot. When I was there I
traveled all one day over the route of an unprecedented cold snap that
had happened along a little earlier and mussed up the citrus groves;
and, though I will not go so far as to say that the orange crop had
died or that it had been killed, it did look to me as though it had
passed away to a considerable extent.

This sort of visitation, however, doesn't occur often; in fact, it never
had occurred before--and the chances are it never will occur again. Next
to taxes and the high cost of living, I judge the California climate to
be about the most dependable institution we have in this country--yes,
and one of the most satisfactory, too. To its climate California is
indebted for being the most extravagantly beautiful spot I've seen on
this continent. It isn't just beautiful in spots--it is beautiful all
over; it isn't beautiful in a sedate, reserved way--there is a prodigal,
riotous, abandoned spendthriftiness to its beauty.

I don't know of anything more wonderful than an automobile ride through
one of the fruit valleys in the Mission country.