CHARLES F. LUMMIS,
in Out West, June, 1892.

JANUARY 27.

As time goes on its endless course, environment is sure to crystallize the American nation.  Its varying elements will become unified and the weeding out process will probably leave the finest human product ever known.  The color, the perfume, the size and form that are placed in the plants will have their analogies in the composite, the American of the future.

And now what will hasten this development most of all?  The proper rearing of children.  Don’t feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature.  Let their souls drink in all that is pure and sweet.  Rear them, if possible, amid pleasant surroundings.  If they come into the world with souls groping in darkness, let them see and feel the light.  Don’t terrify them in early life with the fear of an after world.  There never was a child that was made more noble and good by the fear of a hell.  Let nature teach them the lessons of good and proper living.  Those children will grow to be the best of men and women.  Put the best in them in contact with the best outside.  They will absorb it as a plant does sunshine and the dew.

LUTHER BURBANK.

JANUARY 28.

Let us embark freely upon the ocean of truth; listen to every word of God-like genius as to a whisper of the Holy Ghost, with the conviction that beauty, truth and love are always divine, and that the real Bible, whose inspiration can never be questioned, comprises all noble and true words spoken and written by man in all ages.

WILLIAM DAY SIMONDS,
in Freedom and Fraternity.

JANUARY 29.

Westward the Star of Empire!  Come West, young men!  Westward ho! to all of you who want an opportunity to do something and to be something.  Here is the place in the great Southwest, in the great Northwest, in all the great West, where you can find an opportunity ready to your hand.  We are only 3,000,000 now.  There is room here for 30,000,000.  Where each one of us is now finding an opportunity to do something and be something there is plenty of room for ten more of you to come and join us.

G.W.  BURTON,
in Burton’s Book on California.

JANUARY 30.

IN CALIFORNIA’S MOUNTAINS.

  ’Mid the far, fair hills, beneath the pines
    With their carpet of needles, soft and brown. 
  Dwells the precious scent of rare old wines. 
    Where the sun’s distilling rays pour down: 
  Away from the city, mile on mile,
  Far up in the hills where life’s worth while.

  There the rivulet in gladness leaps
    Down a fronded valley, sweet and cool,
  Or pausing a little moment sleeps
    In a mossy, rock-bound, limpid pool: 
  Away from the city, mile on mile,
  Far up in the hills where life’s worth while.