able business houses. South of the Slot
were the factories, slums, laundries, machine shops, boiler works, and
the abodes of the working class.

JACK LONDON,
in _Saturday Evening Post._

MAY 1.

HAWAII, WEDNESDAY, MAY 1. 1907.

A year ago, Jack and I set out on a horseback trip through the
northern counties of California. It just now came to me--not the date
itself, but the feel of the sweet country, the sweetness of mountain
lilacs, the warm summer-dusty air. * * * And here in Hawaii, I am not
sure but I am at home, for our ground is red, too, in the Valley of
the Moon, where home is--dear home on the side of Sonoma Mountain,
where the colts are, and where the Brown Wolf died.

CHARMIAN K. LONDON,
in _Log of the Snark._

MAY 2.

A dull eyed rattlesnake that lay
All loathsome, yellow-skinned, and slept,
Coil'd tight as pine-knot, in the sun
With flat head through the center run,
Struck blindly back.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

The air was steeped in the warm fragrance of a California spring.
Every crease and wrinkle of the encircling hills was reflected in the
blue stillness of the laguna. Patches of poppies blazed like bonfires
on the mesa, and higher up the faint smoke of the blossoming buckthorn
tangled its drifts in the chaparral. Bees droned in the wild
buckwheat, and powdered themselves with the yellow of the mustard, and
now and then the clear, staccato voice of the meadow-lark broke into
the drowsy quiet--a swift little dagger of sound.

MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM,
in _Stories of the Foothills._

MAY 3.

THE SEA GARDENS AT CATALINA.

The voyager when the glass-bottom boat starts is first regaled with
the sandy beach, in three or four feet of water. He sees the wave
lines, the effect of waves on soft sand, the delicate shading of the
bottom in grays innumerable; now the collar-like egg of a univalve or
the sharp eye of a sole or halibut protruding from the sand. A school
of smelt dart by, pursued by a bass; and as the water deepens bands of
small fish, gleaming like silver, appear; then a black cormorant
dashing after them, or perchance a sea-lion browsing on the bottom in
pursuit of prey. Suddenly the light grows dimmer; quaint shadows
appear on the bottom, and almost without warning the lookers on are in
the depths of the kelpian forest.

CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER,
in _Life in the Open._

MAY 4.

THE HIDEOUS OCTOPUS.

From the glass-bottom boat we can see all