Letters to a Friend 



plenty for you, but you must see them at home. 

 Not an angel could tell a tithe of these glories. 



If you make your home in California, I know 

 from experience how keenly you will feel the 

 absence of the special flowers you love. No 

 others can fill their places; Heaven itself would 

 not answer without Calypso and Linncea. 



I think that you will find in California just 

 what you desire in climate and scenery, for 

 both are so varied. March is the springtime 

 of the plains, April the summer, and May the 

 autumn. The other months are dry and wet 

 winter, uniting with each other, and with the 

 other seasons by splices and overlappings of 

 very simple and very intricate kinds. I rode 

 across the seasons in going to the Yosemite 

 last spring. I started from the Joaquin in the 

 last week of May. All the plain flowers, so 

 lately fresh in the power of full beauty, were 

 dead. Their parched leaves crisped and fell to 

 powder beneath my feet, as though they had 

 been "cast into the oven." And they had not, 

 like the plants of our West, weeks and months 

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