BENJAMIN FAY MILLS,
in The New Revelation.

NOVEMBER 22.

Laughter is the music of the soul.  It is the sun falling on the rain drops.  Laughter is the nightingale’s voice in the night.  It chases away care, destroys worry.  It is the intoxicating cup of good nature, which cheers, but does not cheat.  Laughter paints pictures, dreams dreams, and floods life with love.  Blessed are the people who can laugh!  Laughter is religion and hope; and the apostles of good nature, who see the bright side of life, the queer and funny things among men, the clowns in Vanity Fair, as well as the deep and terrible pathos of life, are missionaries of comfort and evangels of good health.

REV.  WILLIAM RADER,
in Lecture on Uncle Sam; or The Reign of the Common People.

NOVEMBER 23.

Given so unique a climate as ours of Southern California, one would expect it to be hailed gladly as a helper in the solution of this problem of how and where to build and how to adorn one’s home.  For it really meets the most trying items of the problem, making it a pure pleasure.

Instead, then, of the styles which suit the winter-climate of other states, and which, transplanted here, have grown too often into mongrel specimens of foreign style and other times—­we should adapt our Southern California homes, first of all, to the climatic conditions which prevail here.

MADAME CAROLINE SEVERANCE,
in The Mother of Clubs.

NOVEMBER 24.

Houses furnished in all the styles of modern decorative art rise in all directions, embowered in roses, geraniums, heliotropes, and lilies that bloom the long year round and reach a size that makes them hard to recognize as old friends.  Among them rise the banana, the palm, the aloe, the rubber tree, and the pampas-grass with its tall feathery plumes.  Here and there one sees the guava, the Japanese persimmon, Japanese plum, or some similar exotic—­but grapes and oranges are the principal product.  Yet there are groves of English walnuts almost rivaling in size the great orange orchards, and orchards of prunes, nectarines, apricots, plums, pears, peaches, and apples that are little behind in size or productiveness.

T.S.  VAN DYKE,
in Southern California.

NOVEMBER 25.

He saw a great hall furnished in the most extravagantly complete style of Indian art.  The walls were entirely covered with Navaho and Hopi blankets.  There was a frieze of Apache hide-shields, each painted with a brave’s totem, and beneath, a solid cornice of buffalo skulls.  Puma-skins carpeted the floor; at least a hundred baskets trimmed with wood-pecker and quail feathers were scattered about; trophies of Indian bows, arrows, lances, war-clubs, tomahawks, pipes and knives decorated the wall spaces.  Two couches were made up of Zuni bead-work ornaments and buck-skin embroideries.  In spite of all this, it was a tastefully designed room, rather than a museum, flaming with color and vibrant with vitality.