The wild bird carols its sweetest lay,
    And the world seems golden with love’s good cheer;
  There is never a care to cloud the day,
    And Heaven, itself, seems, oh, so near! 
  Away from the city, mile on mile. 
  Far up in the hills where life’s worth while.

WILLIS GEORGE EMERSON.

JANUARY 31.

OUT HERE IN CALIFORNIA.

  Out here in California, when Winter’s on the scene
  And the earth is like a maiden clad in shimmering robes of green;
  When the mountains ’way off yonder lift their snowy peaks to God,
  While here the dainty flowers raise their faces from the sod;
  When the sunbeams kiss the waters till they laugh beneath the rays,
  And nature seems a-joining in a matchless hymn of praise;
  When there’s just enough of frostiness a sense of life to give,
  Right here in California it’s a comfort just to live.

  Out here in California in the January days
  The soul of nature seems to sing a jubilee of praise,
  And the songbirds whistle clearer, and the blossoms are more fair,
  And someway joy and blessing seem about us in the air. 
  It’s cold perhaps off yonder, but we never feel it here,
  For the seasons run together through a Summer-haunted year,
  And Dame Nature in her bounty leaves us nothing to forgive
  Right here in California, where it’s comfort just to live.

  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 do not grow;
  There’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.

FEBRUARY 1.

  Night-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 He gave to her her nights.

ALFRED JAMES WATERHOUSE,
in Some Homely Little Songs.

FEBRUARY 2.