rvant, cook and butler in one, was
noiseless perfection in his attendance, and the works of his art which
he placed before us, were well worthy of our attention; while
California claret, of tenderest texture, helped to whet our appetites
and loosen our tongues.

But we must return to the Saturday which intervened before that dinner.
The morning was spent in a drive through the town--through the garden
would better describe it, for it was all a garden, with rose-embowered
roofs or stately mansions framed in by towering palms and stately
growths of other graceful trees. It is strange to see the effect which
this semi-tropical climate produces on familiar plants. The sweet
geranium towers up until it becomes almost a tree, covering the whole
ends of houses with its perfumed leaves, and the English lavender
emerges from its island modesty, and stands up on this American soil
with all the self-assertion of an independent shrub. In one of the
parks we saw the little English daisy, but that was the same "wee
crimson-tipped flower" that it ever was. It brought tears to the eyes
of some of our party, as the springs of home memories welled up within
the breast. What volumes do blossoms ever speak to us! A bunch of red
primroses, discovered once by chance among the myriad common yellow
blooms which gladdened the woods all about us, stands out forever in
our memory, as a sudden revelation of beauty--and all for us who found
it--which no subsequent possession of far greater worth, has ever yet
excelled.

But the friends, the flowers, the fruits, and the foliage of San Jose,
charming as they all were, could not detain us. We were bound for the
stars; and at noon or thereabouts, a happy party of us took passage in
a large brake, with four horses, for the Lick Observatory on Mount
Hamilton. We were armed with an introduction to Professor Schaeberle,
the astronomer in charge, and the electric wire had flashed also our
coming, beforehand.

It was a merry party that rattled out of San Jose and looked down on
the orchards on either hand as we whirled by. Our ascent was gradual at
first, but soon the magnificent, winding roadway, which cost Santa
Clara County nearly $100,000 to construct, took us up, and up, ever
extending our view, and giving us fresh vistas of surprise, as we
dashed by curves and grades which made the nervous among us more
nervous still. But there was little to fear with such good drivers and
well-trained animals. The