The Smiling Hill-Top | Page 2

the family, suddenly
summoned on business, departed for the East, feeling that he had left us
comfortably established for the month of his absence. The motor purred
along the nine miles to the railroad station without the least indication
of the various kinds of internal complications about to develop, and he
boarded the train, beautifully composed in mind, while we returned to
our hill-top.
It is a most enchanting spot. A red-tiled bungalow is built about a
courtyard with cloisters and a fountain, while vines and flowers fill the
air with the most delicious perfume of heliotrope, mignonette, and
jasmine. Beyond the big living-room extends a terrace with boxes of
deep and pale pink geraniums against a blue sea, that might be the Bay
of Naples, except that Vesuvius is lacking. It is so lovely that after
three years it still seems like a dream. We are only one short look from

the Pacific Ocean, that ocean into whose mists the sun sets in flaming
purple and gold, or the more soft tones of shimmering gray and
shell-pink. We sit on our terrace feeling as if we were in a proscenium
box on the edge of the world, and watch the ever-varying splendor. At
night there is the same sense of infinity, with the unclouded stars above,
and only the twinkling lights of motors threading their way down the
zigzag of the coast road as it descends the cliffs to the plain below us.
These lights make up in part for the fewness of the harbor lights in the
bay. The Pacific is a lonely ocean. There are so few harbors along the
coast where small boats can find shelter that yachts and pleasure craft
hardly exist. Occasionally we see the smoke of a steamer on its way to
or from ports of Lower California, as far south as the point where the
curtain drops on poor distracted Mexico, for there trade ceases and
anarchy begins. There is a strip of land, not belonging to the United
States, called Lower California, controlled by a handsome soldierly
creature, Governor Cantu, whose personal qualities and motives seem
nicely adapted to holding that much, at least, of Mexico in equilibrium.
Only last summer he was the guest of our small but progressive village
at a kind of love feast, where we cemented our friendship with whale
steaks and ginger ale dispensed on the beach, to the accompaniment of
martial music, while flags of both countries shared the breeze. Though
much that is picturesque, especially in the way of food--enciladas,
tamales and the like--strays across the border, bandits do not, and we
enjoy a sense of security that encourages basking in the sun. Just one
huge sheet of water, broken by islands, lies between us and the cherry
blossoms of Japan! There is a thrill about its very emptiness, and yet
since I have seen the Golden Gate I know that that thrill is nothing to
the sensation of seeing a sailing ship with her canvas spread, bound for
the far East. From the West to the East the spell draws. First from the
East to the West; from the cold and storms of New England to our land
of sun it beckons, and then unless we hold tight, the lure of the South
Seas and the glamour of the Far East calls us. I know just how it would
be. Perhaps my spirit craves adventuring the more for the years my
body has had to spend in a chaise longue or hammock, fighting my way
out of a shadow. Anyway, I have heard the call, but I have put cotton in
my ears and am content that life allows me three months out of the
twelve of magic and my hill-top.

There is a town, of course--there has to be, else where would we post
our letters. It's as busy as a beehive with its clubs and model
playgrounds, its New Thought and its "Journal," but I don't have to be
of it. There are only so many hours in the day. I go around "in circles"
all winter; in summer I wish to invite my soul, and there isn't time for
both. I think I am regarded by the people in the village as a mixture of
recluse and curmudgeon, but who cares if they can live on a hill?
One flaw there was in the picture, and that is where the first experiment
in wheedling came in. A large telegraph pole on our property line
bisected the horizon like one of the parallels on a map. It seemed to us
at times to assume the proportions of the Washington Monument. I
firmly made up my mind to have it down if I did nothing else that
summer, and I succeeded, though I began