Is there any kind of climate,
    Any scene for painter’s eye,
  The Almighty hath not crowded
    ’Neath our California sky? 
  Is there any fruit or flower,
    Any gem or jewel old,
  Any wonder of creation
    This Garden doth not hold—­
  From the tiny midget blossom
    To the grand Sequoia high,
  With its roots in God’s own country
    And its top in God’s own sky?

FRED EMERSON BROOKS,
in Old Abe and Other Poems.

JANUARY 24.

A MENDOCINO MEMORY.

  I climbed the canyon to a river-head,
  And looking backward saw a splendor spread. 
  Miles beyond miles, of every kingly hue
  And trembling tint the looms of Arras knew—­
  A flowery pomp as of the dying day,
  A splendor where a god might take his way.

* * * * *

  It was the brink of night and everywhere
  Tall redwoods spread their filmy tops in air;
  Huge trunks, like shadows upon shadow cast,
  Pillared the under twilight, vague and vast.

* * * * *

  Lightly I broke green branches for a bed,
  And gathered ferns, a pillow for my head. 
  And what to this were kingly chambers worth—­
  Sleeping, an ant, upon the sheltering earth.

EDWIN MARKHAM,
in Lincoln and Other Poems.

JANUARY 25.

CALIFORNIA.

  Queen of the Coast, she stands here emerald-crowned,
  Waiting her ships that sail in from the sea,
  Fairer than all the western world to me,
  Is this young Goddess whom the years have found
  Ocean and land, with riches rare and sweet. 
  Loyally bring their treasures to her feet;
  In her brave arms she holds with proud content
  The varied plenty of a continent;
  In her fair face, and in her dreaming eyes,
  Shines the bright promise of her destinies;
  Winds kiss her cheek, and fret the restless tides,
  She in their truth with faith divine confides,
  Watching the course of empire’s brilliant fate,
  She looks serenely through the Golden Gate.

ANNA MORRISON REED.

JANUARY 26.

Here was our first (and still largest) national romance, the first wild-flower of mystery, the first fierce passion of an uncommonly hard-fisted youth.  To this day it persists the only glamour between the covers of our geography.  For more than fifty years its only name has been a witchcraft, and its spell is stronger now than ever, as shall be coolly demonstrated.  This has meant something in the psychology of so unfanciful a race.  The flowering of imagination is no trivial incident, whether in one farm boy’s life or in a people’s.  It may be outgrown, and so much as forgotten; but it shall never again be as if it had never been.  Without just that flower we should not have just this fruit.