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.