1 8923 California Writers 



counted a host of friends wherever he went. The rhe 

 faithful chronicler of "the splendid, idle forties" of 'f^^^^^d, 

 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 ^ 

 Southwest," the creation of its brilliant editor, group"'" 

 Charles F. Lummis, — California's literary dynamo, 

 of whom more later,^ — 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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