One may choose from many hotels one's hostel, or one may live in a beautiful apartment, cook one's own breakfast of bacon and eggs, and sally forth to any one of a dozen cafeterias for luncheon and dinner. We found the Hotel Leighton on West Lake Park eminently satisfactory; a spacious, quiet, well managed establishment with the spaces of the park before it and the cars within three minutes' walk. From Los Angeles we drove through the San Gabriel Valley, dominated by snow covered Mount San Antonio, to Long Beach. The valley is a panorama of new suburban towns, market gardens, and walnut groves. Long Beach is a mixture of Coney Island, Atlantic City, and a solid, substantial inland town. Its public buildings are very fine, its churches being particularly handsome. Its big Hotel Virginia reminds one of the handsome hotels along the boardwalk at Atlantic City, and its long arcade of amusement halls, cheap jewelry shops, and other booths for seaside trinkets is like Coney Island. This stretch of amusement halls and shops lies along the seashore at a lower level than the city proper, and does not impart its character to the rest of the town. It was at Long Beach that I first heard a night-singing bird, somewhat like the nightingale. The little creature sang gaily all night long in the park opposite our hotel. Long Beach and San Pedro are both sailing points for Santa Catalina Island, twenty-five miles away, whose purple-grey heights can be dimly seen across the water. The trip to Catalina is in rather small boats, and is likely to be somewhat trying; but the trials of the two or three hours of voyage are amply awarded by the Island itself. [Illustration: 1. Harbor, Catalina Island. 2. Seals on Rocks at Catalina Island. 3. Catalina Island. 4. Home of Owner of Catalina Island.]