The California Birthday Book

ans ever doubt that their winter weather is the finest in the world, let them try that of sunny Italy. If they have ever grumbled at their gentle rains, brought on the wings of mild winds from the south, let them try the raw rain, hail, snow, and sleet storms of sunny Italy. And then forever after let them hold their peace.

JEROME A. HART,
in Argonaut Letters.

JANUARY 16.

I see thee in this Hellas of the West,
Thy youngest, fairest child, upon whose crest
Thy white snows gleam, and at whose dimpled feet
The blue sea breaks, while on her heaving breast
The flowers droop and languish for her smile,
Thy grace is mirrored in her youthful form,
She lifts her forehead to the battling storm,
As proud, as fair as thou.

Like thee, she opens wide her snowy arms,
And folds the Nations on her mother-breast.
The brawny Sons of Earth have made their home
Where her wide Ocean casts its ceaseless foam,
Where lifts her white Sierras' orient peak
The wild exultant love of all that makes
The nobler life; the energy that shakes the Earth
And gives new eons birth.

S.A.S.H. of College of Notre Dame, San Jose,
in Hellas.

JANUARY 17.

THE RETURN TO CALIFORNIA.

Across the desert waste we sped;
The cactus gloomed on either hand,
Wild, weird, grotesque each frowning head
Uprearing from the sand.

Through dull, gray dawn and blazing noon,
Like furnace fire the quivering air,
Till darkness fell, and the young moon
Smiled forth serene and fair.

A single star adown the sky
Shone like a jewel, clear and bright;
We heard the far coyote's cry
Pierce through the silent night.

Then morning--bathed in purple sheen;
Beyond--the grand, eternal hills;
With sunny, emerald vales between,
Crossed by a thousand