wagon.

Next to the execution of the telegraph

pole I felt a little grass lawn to be of the utmost importance. Nothing could better show how short a time I had been in California than not to realize that even if you can afford to dine on caviar, paté de fois gras, and fresh mushrooms, grass may be beyond your means. I bravely had the ground prepared and sown. First, the boys' governess watered it so hard that it removed all the seed, so we tried again. Then the water was shut off while pipes were being laid on the highway below, and only at dawn and after dark could we get a drop. I did the watering in my night-gown, and was soon rewarded by a little green fuzz. Then all the small rabbits for miles around gathered there for breakfast. They were so tame you could hardly drive them away, so I invited the brothers who kept the hardware store in the village to

come up and shoot them. They came gladly and brought their friends, but were so very anxious to help that I thought they were going to shoot the children too, and had politely to withdraw my invitation. The gardener and I then made a luscious compound of bacon grease and rough-on-rats, which we served on lettuce leaves and left about the edges of the grass plot. Did you ever hear a rabbit scream? They do. I felt like Lucretia Borgia, and decided that if they wanted the lawn they could have it. Oddly enough, a lot of grass came up in quite another part of the garden. I suppose it was the first planting that Fräulein had blown away with the hose! We often have surprises like that in gardening. We once planted window-boxes of mignonette and they came up petunias—volunteer petunias at that. Of

course, it all adds to the interest and adventure of life.

After the water-pipes were laid the gas deserted us, and we had a few meals cooked on all the little alcohol lamps we could muster. Then the motor fell desperately ill, and from then on was usually to be found strewed over the floor of the garage. Jerome K. Jerome says about bicycles, that if you have one you must decide whether you will ride it or overhaul it. This applies as well to motors. We decided to overhaul ours with a few brief excursions, just long enough to give an opportunity for having it towed home. One late afternoon we were hurrying across the mesa to supper, when our magneto flew off into the ditch, scattering screws in all directions. Fortunately, a kind of Knight Errant to our family appeared just in the nick of

time to take us home and send help to the wreck. I once kept a garage in San Diego open half an hour after closing time by a Caruso sob in my voice over the telephone, while my brother-in-law's miserable chauffeur hurried over for an indispensable part.

Poppy, the cow, contributed her bit—it wasn't milk, either—to this complicated month, but deserves a chapter all to herself.

The backbone of the family found my letters "so entertaining" at first, but gradually a note of uneasiness crept into his replies after I had told him that Joedy had fallen out of the machine and had just escaped our rear wheels, and that the previous night we had had three earthquakes. I had never felt an earthquake before, and it will be some time before I develop the nonchalance of a seasoned Californian,

whose way of referring to one is like saying, "Oh, yes, we did have a few drops of rain last night." One more little tremble and I should have gathered the family for a night in the garden.

After an incendiary had set fire to several houses in town, and Fräulein had had a peculiar seizure that turned her a delicate sea-green, while she murmured, "I am going to die," I sat down and took counsel with myself. What next? I bought a rattlesnake antidote outfit—that, at least, I could anticipate, and then I went out with the axe and hacked out the words "Suma Paz" from the pergola. We are now "The Smiling Hill-Top," for though peace does not abide with us, we keep right on smiling.

It would doubtless be the proper thing for me to begin by quoting Stevenson:

"The friendly cow, all red and white,

 I love with all my heart," etc.

but I'd rather not. In the first place she wasn't, and in the second place I didn't. The only thing about it that fits is the color scheme; Poppy was a red-and-white cow,

but I'd rather not. In the first place she wasn't, and in the second place I didn't. The only thing about it that fits is the color scheme; Poppy was a red-and-white cow, or rather a kind of strawberry roan. Perhaps she didn't like being inherited (she came to us with "The Smiling Hill-Top"), or maybe she was lonely on the hillside and felt that it was too far from town. Almost all the natives of the village feel that way; or perhaps she took one of those aversions to me that aren't founded on anything in particular. At any rate, I never saw any expression but resentment in her eye, so that no warm friendship ever grew up between us.

The only other cow we ever boarded—I use the word advisedly—did not feel any more drawn to me than Poppy. Evidently I am not the type that cows entwine their affections about. She was Pennsylvania Dutch and shared Poppy's sturdy appetite, though it all went to figure. Two quaint maiden ladies next door took care

of her and handed the milk over our fence, while it was still foaming in the pail. Miss Tabitha and Miss Letitia—how patient they were with me in my abysmal ignorance of the really vital things of life, such as milking, preserving, and pickling! They undertook it all for me, but in the end I had a small laugh at their expense. I gave them my grandmother's recipes for brandied peaches and pickled peaches, and though rigidly temperance, they consented to do a dozen jars of each. Alas! they mingled the two—now as I write it down I wonder if perhaps they did it on purpose, on the principle that drug stores now put a dash of carbolic in our 95 per cent alcohol. In which case, of course, the joke is on me.

To return to Poppy. At first I was delighted with the thought of unlimited milk,

bought a churn and generally prepared to enjoy being a dairymaid. I soon found out my mistake. Poppy was "drying up" just as the vegetation was. The Finn woman who milked her morning and night, and who seemed to be in much closer sympathy with her than I ever hoped to be, said that what she must have was green food. Having no lawn, for reasons previously stated, that was a poser. My brother-in-law's chauffeur, who was lent to me for a month, unbent sufficiently to go to town and press a bill into the hand of the head gardener of "The Place" of the village, so that we might have the grass mowed from that lawn. Alas for frail human nature! It seems that he disappeared from view about once in so often, and that his feet at that moment were trembling on the brink. So he slid over

the edge, and the next man in charge had other friends with other cows. I tried the vegetable man next. He was a pleasant Greek, and promised me all his beet-tops and wilted lettuce. That was good as far as it went, but Poppy would