early poverty fell off them like a garment, and who, carried away by
their power, displayed the barbaric caprices of Roman empresses.

The sudden possession of vast wealth had intoxicated this people,
lifting them from the level of the commonplace into a saturnalia of
extravagance. Poverty, the only restraint many of them had ever felt,
was gone. Money had made them lawless, whimsical, bizarre. It had
developed all-conquering personalities, potent individualities. They
were still playing with it, wondering at it, throwing it about.

GERALDINE BONNER,
in _Tomorrow's Tangle._



JUNE 24.


Menlo Park, originally a large Spanish grant, had long since been cut
up into country places for what may be termed the "Old Families of San
Francisco!" The eight or ten families that owned this haughty precinct
were as exclusive, as conservative, as any group of ancient families
in Europe. Many of them had been established here for twenty years,
none for less than fifteen. This fact set the seal of gentle blood
upon them for all time in the annals of California.

GERTRUDE ATHERTON,
in _The Californians._