While ye laughed down their wrack and builded on!

JOHN WARD STIMSON,
in _Wandering Chords._

JULY 28.

High above on the western cliff a giant head of cactus reared infernal
arms and luminous bloom. One immense clump threw a shadow across the
cliff road where it leaves the river plain and winds along the canyon
to the mesa above the sea--the road over which in the old days the
Mission Indians bore hides to the ships and flung them from the cliffs
to the waiting boats below.

MARAH ELLIS RYAN,
in _For the Soul of Rafael._

JULY 29.

Distinct from all others, the sequoias are a race apart. The big-tree,
and the redwood of the Coast Range, are the only surviving members of
that ancient family, the giants of the fore-world. Their immense
trunks might be the fluted columns of some noble order of
architecture, surviving its builders like the marble temples of
Greece--columns three hundred feet high and thirty feet through at the
base. Such a vast nave, such majestic aisles, such sublime spires,
only the forest cathedrals know. Symmetrical silver firs, giant cedars
and spruce, grow side by side with sugar pines of vast and irregular
outline, whose huge branches, like outstretched arms, hold aloft the
splendid cones--such is the ancient wood.

C.H. KIRKHAM,
in _In the Open._

JULY 30.

Said one, "This city, as you know,
Though young in years, as cities go,
Has quite a history to repeat
If records have been kept complete.
Oft has it felt the earthquake shock
That made the strongest building rock.
And more than once 'gone up' in smoke
Till scarce a building sheltered folk.
The citizens can point to spots
Where people fashioned hangman's knots
With nimble fingers, to supply
Some hardened rogues a hempen tie,
Whom _Vigilantes_ and their friends
Saw fit to drop from gable-ends."

PALMER COX,
in _The Brownies Through California._

JULY 31.

ROSEMARY.

Indian summer has gone with its beautiful moon.
And all the sweet roses I gathered in June
Are faded. It may be the cloud-sylphs of Even
Have stolen the tints of those roses for Heaven.
O bonnie bright blossom! in the years far away.
So evanished thy bloom on an evening in May.
The sunlight now sleeps in the lap of the west,
And the star-beams are barring its chamber of rest.
While Twilight is weaving her blue-tinted bowers
To mellow the landscape where slumber the flowers.
I would