There is a place on the beach by the coast road between Pasadena and San Diego where we always have lunch on our journeys to and from town.  Just after you leave the picturesque ruins of the Capistrano Mission in its sheltered valley, you come out suddenly on the ocean, and the road runs by the sand for miles.  With a salt breeze blowing in your face you can’t resist the lunch box long.  With a stuffed egg in one hand and a sandwich in the other, Joedy, aged eight, observed on our last trip south, “This is the bright side of living.”  I agree with him.

One late afternoon a friend of ours was driving alone and offered a lift to two young men who were swinging along on foot.  “Your price?” they asked.  “A smile and a song,” was the reply.  So in they got, and those last fifty miles were gay.  That is the sort of thing which fits so perfectly into the atmosphere of this land.  Perhaps it is the orange blossoms, perhaps it is that we have extra-sized moons, perhaps it is the old Spanish charm still lingering.  All I know is that it is a land of glamour and romance.  J——­ said he was going to import a pair of nightingales.  I said that if he did he’d have a lot to answer for.

Places are as different as people.  The East, and by that I mean the country east of the Alleghanies and not Iowa and Kansas, which are sometimes so described out here, has reached years of discretion and is set in its way.  California has temperament, and it is still very young and enthusiastic and is having a lot of fun “growing up.”  I love the stone walls, huckleberry pies, and johnny cakes of Rhode Island, and I love the associations of my childhood and my family tree, but there is something in the air of this part of the world that enchants me.  It is a certain “Why not?” that leads me into all sorts of delightful experiences.  Conventionality does not hold us as tightly as it does in the East, and a certain tempting feeling of unlimited possibilities in life makes waking up in the morning a small adventure in itself.  It isn’t necessary to point out the dangers of an unlimited “Why not?” cult—­they are too obvious.  “Why not?” is a question that one’s imagination asks, and imagination is one of the best spurs to action.  I will give an example of what I mean:  When war was declared J——­ suggested putting contribution boxes with red crosses on the collars of “Rags” and “Tags,” the boys’ twin Yorkshire terriers, and coaxing them to sit up on the back of the motor.  I never had begged on a street corner, but I thought at once, “Why not?” The result was much money for the Red Cross, an increased knowledge of human nature for me, as well as some delightful new friends.  I should never have had the courage to try it in New York—­let us say; I should have been afraid I’d be arrested.