18923 California Writers 



counted a host of friends wherever he went. The The 

 faithful chronicler of : 'the splendid, idle forties" of s P lendid > 

 Alta California, the days "before the gringo came," 

 was Mrs. Gertrude F. Atherton, great-grandniece of 

 Benjamin Franklin; in recent years the scenes of her 

 sparkling novels and sketches have often been laid 

 in Europe, where she has spent many years. ' John 

 Bonner, essayist and literary critic, seemed in his 

 virile personality to embody some of the color of 

 the passing era, to which he properly belonged. 

 With Lucius H. Foote, a scholarly poet of wide 

 public interests, I had later close relations in the 

 management of the Academy of Sciences. 



In Los Angeles, The Land of Sunshine, a small but The Land 

 vivid ''Monthly Magazine of California and the f 

 Southwest," the creation of its brilliant editor, gr0 u p " 

 Charles F. Lummis, California's literary dynamo, 

 of whom more later, 1 levied toll on an admirable 

 group in no sense purely local. As a matter of fact, 

 many of them were as well known to Eastern circles 

 as to their admirers here, and of some I have already 

 spoken. 



Among them was Margaret Collier Graham, a 

 woman of rare wit and noble character. Her 

 " Stories of the Foothills" are full of color; her 

 essays reveal great sanity, balance, and devotion to 

 right living. Mary Austin we did not meet face to 

 face for a number of years, but her rare sketches of 

 life and nature in an unfrequented Sierran district 

 compelled immediate admiration, for to the new 

 atmospheric note was joined a clean and perfect 

 artistry of phrase and figure, making "The Land 



1 See Chapter xxiv, page 621. 



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