over a South Sea lagoon, and the palm trees rustled and the phosphorescence broke in silver on the bow of the pearl schooner, where she rode at anchor in our little bay, could I keep my contract and avoid sentiment?  How ridiculous to suppose that stipulating that the lady should be forty or over would make any difference!  What is forty?  If they had said that she must be a cross-eyed spinster with a hare-lip, it would have been more to the point.  I’m not a spinster or cross-eyed, but why go on?  I don’t intend to commit myself about the age limit.  I don’t have to, because I am not going to apply for the position, after all.  I have a South Sea temperament but as it is securely yoked to a New England upbringing, the trade wind will only blow the sails of my imagination to that sandalwood port.

[Illustration]

SUNKIST

We saw a most amusing farce some time ago which contained much interesting information concerning the worth of advertising.  I forget the fabulous figure at which “The Gold Dust Twins” trade-mark is valued, but I know that it easily puts them into Charley Chaplin’s class.  I am sure that “Sunkist” cannot be far behind the “Twins,” for no single word could possibly suggest a more luscious, delectable, and desirable fruit than that.  It would even take the curse off being a lemon to be a “Sunkist” lemon.  It contains no hint of the perilous early life of an orange.  Truly that life is more chancey than an aviator’s.  They say that in the good old days there were no frosts, but that irrigation is gradually changing the climate of Southern California.  We would not dare to express an opinion on this much discussed point, as we have never gone to any new place where the climate has been able to stand the shock.  It is always an unusual season.  I do know, however, that bringing up a crop of oranges is as anxious an undertaking as “raising” a family.  Little black smudge pots stand in rows in the groves, ready to be lighted at the first hint of frost.  The admonition of the hymn applies to fruit growers as well as to foolish virgins: 

    “See that your lamps are burning,
     Your vessels filled with oil.”

On sharp mornings the valleys are full of a gray haze still lingering protectingly over the ranches.  Then there are blights.  I don’t pretend to know all the ills the orange is heir to.  Sometimes it grows too fat and juicy and cracks its skin, and sometimes it is attacked by scale.  Every tree has to be swathed in a voluminous sheet and fumigated once a year at great expense.  After living out here some time, I began to understand why even in the heart of the orange country we sometimes pay fifty cents a dozen for the large fruit.  There is a way, however, of getting around the high cost of living in this particular—­you can go to a packing house and buy for thirty-five cents an entire box of what are called culls—­oranges too large or too small for shipping, or with some slight imperfection that would not stand transportation, but are as good for most purposes as the “Sunkist” themselves.