TO MOUNT WILSON.

  Thou mystic one!  Thou prophet hoar! 
    Thy teachings quicken—­man’s shall fade. 
  Ere man was dust thou wert before;
    Thy bosom for his resting place was made. 
  And when thou tak’st in thy embrace
    And hold’st me up against the sky
  And Earth’s fair ’broideries I trace—­
    All girdled in by circling bands that tie
  Unto her side my destiny—­
    Then unto me thou dost make clear
  Why with Life’s essence here I’m thrilled. 
    Then all thy prophecies I hear,
  And in my being feel them all fulfilled. 
    And as the narrow rim of eye
  Contains the vast and all-encircling sky. 
    So in the confines of the soul
  The undulating universe may roll. 
    And out in space, my soul set free,
  I turn an astral forged key
    Which opes the door ’twixt God and me,
  I hear the secrets of Eternity! 
    In Immortality I trust,
  Believing that the cosmic dust—­
    Alike in man and skies star-sown—­
    Is pollen from the Amaranth blown.

LANNIE HAYNES MARTIN.

  Pause upon the gentle hillside, view San Carlos by the sea
  ’Gainst pale light a shape Morisco wrought in faded tapestry. 
  ’Neath Mt.  Carmel’s brooding shadow, peaceful lies the storied pile,
  And the white-barred river near it sings a requiem all the while.

* * * * *

  Where were roofs of tiles or thatches, roughest mounds mark every
      side,
  And where once the busy courtyard searching winds find crevice wide.

* * * * *

AMELIA WOODWARD TRUESDELL,
in A California Pilgrimage.

JUNE 1.

In fifteen years the Mission of San Juan Bautista had erected one of the most beautiful and ornate chapels in Alta California, which, together with the necessary buildings for the padres, living rooms and dormitories for the neophytes, storehouses and corrals for the grain and cattle, formed three sides of a patio two hundred feet square, with the corrals leading away beyond.  The Indians, with only a few teachers and helpers, had done all this work.

MRS. A.S.C.  FORBES,
in Mission Tales in the Days of the Dons.

JUNE 2.

From his (the Indian’s) point of view there is perhaps love; even, it may be, romance.  Much depends upon the standpoint one takes.  The hills that look high from the valley, seem low looking down from the mountain. * * * For the world over, under white skin or skin of bronze-brown, the human heart throbs the same; for we are brothers—­aye, brothers all!

IDAH MEACHAM STROBRIDGE,
in Loom of the Desert.

We had seen the spire of the Episcopal Church, which forms so pleasing a feature in the bosom of the valley, pale and fade from sight; the lofty walls of the old Mission of San Gabriel were no longer visible Suddenly from out the silence and gathering shades fell upon our ears a chime so musical and sweet, so spiritually clear and delicate, that had honest John Bunyan heard it he might well have deemed himself arrived at the land of Beulah. * * * It was the hour of vespers at the Old Mission.