MARAH ELLIS RYAN,
in _For the Soul of Rafael._



JUNE 17.


Of all the old grandees who, not forty years before, had called the
Californias their own; living a life of Arcadian magnificence,
troubled by few cares, a life of riding over vast estates clad in silk
and lace, _botas_ and _sombreros_, mounted upon steeds as
gorgeously caparisoned as themselves, eating, drinking, serenading at
the gratings of beautiful women, gambling, horse-racing, taking part
in splendid religious festivals, with only the languid excitement of
an occasional war between rival governors to disturb the placid
surface of their lives--of them all Don Roberto was a man of wealth
and consequence today.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON,
in _The Californians._



JUNE 18.


The house was a ruinous adobe in the old Mexican quarter of Los
Angeles. The great, bare, whitewashed room contained only the altar
and a long mirror in a tarnished gilt frame; one, the symbol of