296 
LAND OF SUNSHINE. 
when he will return to peck it out in a round white globule of 
sticky wax. 
Besides these mentioned, there are many other tourist birds, 
each as welcome as the other. To induce them to feel at home 
in one’s grounds one must see that too much spray is not used 
on the foliage, that the trees and shrubbery are mostly of 
natural growth, little clipped, with swaying branches and 
hidden nooks. That people move about softly, sweet of tone, 
and harmonious of character. That there are no cats about, 
and that plenty of food is placed in tempting display. As a 
usual thing, compact, precise, hotel grounds are not sought by 
the birds. Birds love to “see out,” with plenty of wing 
space and listening room. If one would become familiar to 
the birds one must form the habit of sitting or standing stock¬ 
still. Birds notice movement more than form. But who ever 
saw Southern Californians sitting or standing stock-still ? Well, 
one can make-believe stand still, and see what there is to see. 
It may be a butterfly sitting down on his haunches like a dog. 
Or it may be a cotillion of airy flies dancing on nothing. Or 
it may be a rufous hummer talking love to his mate while she 
naps on a blade of pampas grass. 
Pasadena, Cal. 
In Western Letters. 
BY CHAS. F. LUMMJS. 
T requires no serious strain of the imagination to 
foresee a very near time when California shall be 
either the steady home or the ready refuge of a large 
proportion of American writers and artists. Not 
that a few present swallows make a summer, but 
because summer draws the swallows. People of 
brains do not know very much ; but the attraction 
of gravitation works upon them as well as upon those 
who do not know anything. And when they come to 
realize its pull they are apt to yield a little more gracefully and gratefully. 
Though the temptation is strong to their vanity and their pockets alike 
to leave Nature (whence their strength cometh) and sleep on the steps of 
the market-place, they are learning — by slow stages, as all good things 
are learned, and by degrees of the most teachable among them, as all 
learning advances — how much better to live in and to work in and to 
rest in California is than New York. And if there is anything in 
evolution, or anything in common sense, the day is not far distant when 
the Athens of America will be as far from Boston as it cau get — without 
wading. With fair luck, I expect to live to see it; with good luck, to 
see it in the age of Pericles. 
* * 
If we of the real West have to stammer a little about the geography of 
Chicago, there are times when we feel no embarrassment about receiving 
her into our map. It is a delicate question, and a complicated one, 
whether Chicago is West or East; and it is to be analyzed by neither 
provincial. She is Eastern enough to play the Eastern cities their own 
fool game; she is Western enough to beat them at it — and beat them 
