EDITORIAL 



OR eight hundred miles the coast hills of California look out upon the 

 western sea. For the greater part bold promontories push abruptly 

 into the dashing surf, but interspersed between stretch scores of 

 splendid crescent lines of beach, perpetually smooth and clean, and 

 fragrant with the sea. Many of these lie secluded and unknown, and 

 are virgin fields of pleasure for the California to come. Elsewhere man has 

 come and made his romping-places, with pavilion, bathhouse, and hotel, 

 and every device of pleasuring by the sea. Some of these resorts have been 

 for years bright stars on the itinerary of the tourist, and some still have their 

 fame unsung. One characteristic have all the California beaches in com- 

 mon, that of hard, firm footing and magnificent breadth. The breakers 

 of other seas are belittled by the towering surfs of our Pacific front. Yet 

 nowhere else, unless on the isles of the tropic ocean, are the billows more 

 friendly to the frolicking bathers, who come here from every busy mart 

 of earth to tarry a while and bask in the grateful sunshine and forget. For 

 him who in far journeyings gravitates at last to a California crescent beach 

 the river of Lethe forthwith flows, and for the space of his tarrying oblivion 

 is his. The troublous world is stilled and grows remote, and into his dream- 

 ing soul there seeps, like amber wine, the California sunshihe, waking 

 moods and visions of a golden age. It is indeed no less than intoxication, 

 but of a kind that has no evil aftermath, and it lives a beneficent memory 

 in all the years to come. 



Mountains are for strenuous folk who love to surmount, to subdue, to 

 conquer new horizons. And for such as these indeed no other land com- 

 pares in lavish invitation. But for the other sort, who loaf and lounge and 

 lie a-dream, a whole new world awaits In the languorous atmospheres of 

 California's ocean front. Far in the south the blissful Coronado inaugu- 

 rates the pageant of the surf, and thence northward range a line of seaside 

 pleasure-places that the world over are without compeers in the sum of 

 their allurements. Space lacks to even name them all, much less mark 

 their individual charms. And so enticing are they all, indeed, that choice 

 among them is the one embarrassment. For those who seek the gayety 

 of seaside life, the happy, teeming throngs, the sparkle and motion of the 

 crowd on pleasure bent, there are the great resorts of Coronado, Newport, 

 Long Beach, Redondo, Santa Barbara, Monterey, Santa Cruz, and a score 

 between. Unexcelled are their hotels and the accessories for making the 

 most of happy days. And for the toiler who can snatch but a week-end 

 outing from his office-hours there are such idyllic shore suburbs as Belve- 

 dere and Sausalito and Santa Monica, where a mere ferriage or trolley fare 

 transports the weary from the dust and pressure of the town to realms of 

 the heart's desire. Or for that other one who would keep a primitive tryst 

 with Nature in her wild, there are those secluded crescents of the shore 

 where sea-birds and solitude await his solitary coming with blanket-roll 

 and frying-pan. All alike bask under the guarantee of California's rainless 

 summer skies, and all alike expand the soul with the joyous freedom of an 

 outlook on the largest and most kindly ocean of the earth. 



