Never was garden more unintentionally started, and never did one prove greater source of pleasure. * * * One day, about Christmas time, my little nephew brought me two small twigs of honeysuckle—­not slips or shoots, and I stuck them in the ground by the front porch. * * * When it was just eighteen months old honeysuckle vines were twining tenderly about the corner pillars of the porch, drawing their network across to the other support, and covered with bunches of white, creamy tubes, the air heavy with their perfume. * * * The climbing rose had reached the lattice work, and its yellowish flowers formed a most effective contrast to the sky-blue of the sollya blossoms, trained up on the other side of the porch.  The beds were edged variously with dark blue violets and pink daisies, above which bloomed salvias, euphorbias, lantanas, tube-roses, forget-me-nots, carnations, white lilies, Japan lilies, iris, primroses, ranunculus, lilies-of-the-valley, pansies, anemones, dahlias, and roses—­white, red, pink, yellow, crimson, cream—­in the wildest profusion.

JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD McCRACKIN,
in Another Juanita.

SEPTEMBER 4.

AFTERWARD.

  A dying moon fell down the sky,
    As one looked out to see
  The place where once her soul endured
    Its lengthened Calvary. 
  Of all the mem’ries gathered there—­
    Their faces wan with tears—­
  One only smiled—­a baby’s smile—­
    To rectify the years.

DOROTHEA L. MOORE.

SEPTEMBER 5.

The harvesting of hops is the conjunction of the rude essentials of farm life with the highest effect in art.  What artist but would note enthusiastically the inimitable pose of that young girl tip-toeing to bring down the tuft of creamy blossoms overhead; or the modest nudity of the wee bronze savage capering about a stolid squaw in a red sprigged muslin?  Indeed, there is indescribable piquancy in this unconscious grouping of the pickers and their freedom from restraint.  For each artistic bit—­a laughing face in an aureole of amber clusters, a statuesque chin and throat, Indians in grotesquely picturesque raiment, and the yellow visages of the Chinese—­the vines make an idyllic framing with a sinking summer sun in the background lending a shimmering transparency to leaf and flower.

NINETTA EAMES,
in Hop-Picking Time, The Cosmopolitan, November, 1893.

SEPTEMBER 6.

Golf has spread with great rapidity throughout California, and though many people may have taken it up from an idea that it is the correct thing, the game will always be popular, especially in the Southern part of the State, where more people of leisure live than in the Northern part, and where the large infusion of British and Eastern residents tends to foster a love of out-door sports.  Golf may be played in any part of Central or Southern California on any day in the year when a gale is not blowing or heavy rain falling.  Occasionally the strong winds render golfing somewhat arduous, but the enthusiast can play on about three hundred and fifty days in the year.