* *

Thus kneeling, prayed these children of God. The silent summer
lightning shone from the east to the west, and upon its light flew
down from heaven a radiant host of winged angels, and hovered above
their heads. Then they blended with the angels and were themselves as
if angels, for upon earth there were no two souls more bright, more
pure, more innocent.

ORSO.

The last days of autumn in Anaheim, a town situated in Southern
California, are days of joy and celebration. The grape gathering is
finished and the town is crowded with the vineyard hands. There is
nothing more picturesque than the sight of these people, composed
partly of a sprinkling of Mexicans, but mainly of Cahuilla Indians,
who come from the wild mountains of San Bernardino to earn some money
by gathering grapes. They scatter through the streets and market
places, called lolas, where they sleep in tents or under the roof of
the sky, which is always clear at this time of the year. This
beautiful city, surrounded with its growths of eucalyptus, olive,
castor, and pepper trees, is filled with the noisy confusion of a
fair, which strangely contrasts with the deep and solemn silence of
the plains, covered with cacti, just beyond the vineyards. In the
evening, when the sun hides his radiant head in the depths of the
ocean, and upon the rosy sky are seen in its light the equally
rosy-tinted wings of the wild geese, ducks, pelicans and cranes,
descending by the thousands from the mountains to the ocean, then in
the town the lights are lit and the evening amusements begin. The
negro minstrels play on bones, and by the campfires can be heard the
picking of the banjo; the Mexicans dance on an out-spread poncha their
favorite bolero; Indians join in the dance, holding in their teeth
long white sticks of kiotte, or beating time with their hands, and
exclaiming, "E viva;" the fires, fed with redwood, crackle as they
blaze, sending up clouds of bright sparks, and by its reflection can
be seen the dancing figures, and around them the local settlers with
their comely wives and sisters watching the scene.

The day on which the juice from the last bunch of grapes is trampled
out by the feet of the Indians is generally celebrated by the advent
of Hirsch's Circus, from Los Angeles. The proprietor of the circus is
a German, and besides owns a menagerie composed of monkeys, jaguars,
pumas, African lions, one elephant, and several parrots, childish wit