The California Birthday Book Author:George Wharton James Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Out here in California where the orange turns to gold And Nature has forgotten all the art of growing old, There's not a day throughout the year when flowers ... more »do not grow; Inere's not a single hour the streams do not unfettered flow; There's not a briefest moment when the songsters do not sing, And life's a sort of constant race 'twixt Summer and the Spring. Why, just to know the joy of it one might his best years give— Out here in California, where it's comfort just to live. A. J. Waterhouse. Nielli-time in California. Elsewhere men only guess At the glory of the evenings that are perfect—nothing less; But here the nights, returning, are the wond'rous gifts of God— As if the days were maidens fair with golden slippers shod. There is no cloud to hide the sky; the universe is ours, And the starlight likes to look and laugh in Cupid- haunted bowers. Oh the restful, peaceful evenings! In them my soul delights, For God loved California when lie gave to her her nights. Alfred James Waterhouse, in Some Homclv Little Songs. February 2. There it lay, a constellation of lights, a golden radiance dimmed by the distance. San Francisco the Impossible. The City of Miracles! Of it and its people many stories have been told, and many shall be; but a thousand tales shall not exhaust its treasury of romance. Earthquake and fire shall not change it, terror and suffering shall not break its glad, mad spirit. Time alone can tame the town, restrain its wanton manners, refine its terrible beauty, rob it of its nameless charm, subdue it to the commonplace. May time be merciful—may it delay its fatal duty till we have learned that to love, to forgive, to enjoy, is but to understand ! Gelett Burgess, in The Heart Line. February 2.Inconstancy. T...« less