Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

A TRUTHFUL WOMAN IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

BY KATE SANBORN

AUTHOR OF ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM, ETC.

NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1906

COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I.--HINTS FOR THE JOURNEY II.--AT CORONADO BEACH III.--SAN DIEGO IV.--EN ROUTE TO LOS ANGELES V.--LOS ANGELES AND ROUND ABOUT VI.--PASADENA VII.--CAMPING ON MOUNT WILSON VIII.--CATCHING UP ON THE KITE-SHAPED TRACK IX.--RIVERSIDE X.--A LESSON ON THE TRAIN XI.--SANTA BARBARA XII.--HER CITY AND COUNTY XIII.--IN GALA DRESS XIV.--AU REVOIR

A Truthful Woman in Southern California

CHAPTER I.

HINTS FOR THE JOURNEY.

The typical Forty-niner, in alluring dreams, grips the Golden Fleece.

The _fin-de-siecle_ Argonaut, in Pullman train, flees the Cold and Grip.

_En Sol y la Sombra_--shade as well as sun.

Yes, as California is. I resolve neither to soar into romance nor drop into poetry (as even Chicago drummers do here), nor to idealize nor quote too many prodigious stories, but to write such a book as I needed to read before leaving my "Abandoned Farm," "Gooseville," Mass. For I have discovered that many other travellers are as ignorant as myself regarding practical information about every-day life here, and many others at home may know even less.

So let me say that California has not a tropical, but a semi-tropical climate, and you need the same clothing for almost every month that is found necessary and comfortable in New York or Chicago during the winter.

Bring fur capes, heavy wraps, simple woolen dresses for morning and outdoor life; and unless rolling in wealth, pack as little as possible of everything else, for extra baggage is a curse and will deplete a heavy purse,--that rhymes and has reason too. I know of one man who paid $300 for extra baggage for his party of fifteen from Boston to Los Angeles.

Last year I brought dresses and underwear for every season, and for a vague unknown fifth; also my lectures, causing profanity all along the line, and costing enough to provide drawing-room accommodations for the entire trip.

Why did I come? Laryngitis, bronchitis, tonsilitis, had claimed me as their own. Grip (I will not honor it with a foreign spelling, now it is so thoroughly acclimated and in every home) had clutched me twice--nay, thrice; doctors shook their heads, thumped my lungs, sprayed my throat, douched my nose, dosed me with cough anodynes and nerve tonics, and pronounced another winter in the North a dangerous experiment. Some of you know about this from personal experience. Not a human being could I induce to join me. If this hits your case, do not be deterred; just come and be made over into a joyous, healthful life. I would not urge those to take the tedious journey who are hopelessly consumptive. Home is the best place for such, and although I see many dragging wearily along with one lung, or even half of that, who settle here and get married and prolong existence for a few years, and although some marvellous cures have been effected, still I say the same.

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Truthful Woman in Southern California by Sanborn
• 2: Come straight down to Coronado Beach
• 3: Point Loma grandly guarding the right
• 4: The Hotel del Coronado is a mammoth hostelry
• 5: Some one says that Californians irrigate
• 6: And cross the ferry to San Diego
• 7: San Diego is the Naples of America
• 8: Flora Kimball has worked side by side with her husband
• 9: And once again she returned to consciousness and the tamale
• 10: There is the valley of El Cajon the box
• 11: Horton helped many to pay their passage
• 12: Said The Indian of California is a species of monkey
• 13: Diego was the patron saint of Spain
• 14: If a man eats peanuts he will think peanuts
• 15: And that San Luis Rey is now occupied
• 16: As a protection from the rattlesnake
• 17: One of the oldest pictures of Junipero Serra
• 18: I wish he could have once seen Pasadena
• 19: Passion vines completely cover the arbors
• 20: Of deepest orange on silkiest texture
• 21: Goddess again summons Harlequin
• 22: This famous resort is in East Pasadena
• 23: Almost bending over the homes of Pasadena
• 24: Allowing the mule to fall backward
• 25: Wilson to the southerly peak of Mt
• 26: Except as to the stray Pleiades
• 27: Beyond San Bernardino is the loop
• 28: There are several experts on this subject in Pasadena Mrs
• 29: The dice were eight acorn shells
• 30: Tarantulas never come out at night
• 31: I told Quilletts you know 'bout Quilletts
• 32: Then Riverside is an immense orange grove
• 33: At Pasadena their severe winds are called Riversiders
• 34: Scenery that differs from that of Pasadena
• 35: And for a little lake the pretty name lagunita
• 36: Seven beets weighed 500 pounds
• 37: 1600 acres are planted to beans
• 38: Which she could not have learned from Origen
• 39: 000 one year from Santa Rosa alone
• 40: I hear that at Catalina the goats
• 41: Old man Nidever had some bed ticking
• 42: This is the American vaquero usually a short
• 43: Elwood Cooper's olive oil is justly famous
• 44: And bore thousands of small red tomatoes
• 45: The mountains look on Marathon
• 46: Or yellow alone in draperies combined with the poppy
• 47: One carriage is banked with marigolds
• 48: The petals fell to make the skirt
• 49: The pommel is encased in silver
• 50: Everybody up and down the coast knows Dixie Thompson
• 51: How little is known of Northern California
• 52: And peal after peal of heavy thunder was heard
• 53: Coming to Southern California an almost hopeless invalid
• 54: The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson
• 55: Professor McMaster has a clear
• 56: The best biography of Greeley yet written
• 57: Hemment has done his work well