Here as nowhere else is illustrated
the truth of the Scriptural adage: "To him that hath shall be given,
but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he
hath."
When you go to a place scarcely thirty miles distant, which, in New
England, you would reach in an hour, you are obliged to travel all
night, as you must climb cloud-touching mountains, going many miles to
cover what would be only one mile in a straight line; now you glide
along close to the long, lazy waves of the great Pacific Ocean, where
the grass kisses the salt lips of the sea; now from the tops of the
Santa Cruz mountains, you survey the world at your feet; now you rush
through the red-wood primeval forests, giants touching the clouds with
their tops, while in the hollow trunk of one of these trees a family
of twelve can live quite comfortably; then on to Los Angeles,--"City
of the angels," they call it--a beautiful city for those possessed of
means or who are dispossessed of bodies which must be clothed and fed.
[Illustration: The Dome of Mount Shasta Gleams like "the Great White
Throne."]
Some have "struck oil" here, and the stench and grime from the
spouting wells have ruined the houses of hundreds who have reaped no
profit from the petroleum, because they did not own the adjoining lots
where it was found; then on we go to lovely Passadena on a table-land
surrounded by snow-capped mountains; but the winds from the cold
summits come suddenly when you are melting with the heat, bringing
plenty of catarrh for all; then on to San Diego on the hill by the
sea, where the fog is sometimes so thick you can cut it into blocks
with an axe; then on to the far-famed Coronado Hotel, close by the
sea.
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