The three families were doubly related,--Hathaway mothers and Bixby fathers, Mary and Llewellyn, Margaret and Jotham, Susan and John. I have told of my father’s marriage to Sarah Hathaway. She was always a delicate girl and lived only six years after she came west as a bride. There were no children, much to the disappointment of them both. After an interval of six years father returned to Maine and married my mother, Mary, the little sister of his loved Sarah, who had, in the twelve years passed, grown to womanhood. When I came I was given the name of this beloved older sister and wife. Before this time Jotham Bixby and his family had moved from San Juan to the Cerritos ranch, bringing with them for company at the isolated home, his wife’s sister, Susan, who, in the course of time married the young cousin, John W. Bixby, newly come from Maine. They fell in love and became engaged and kept their secret right under the noses of interested friends and relatives who were planning all sorts of matrimonial alliances except the one that was planning itself--one destined to exceptional happiness. When they married they left the Cerritos and lived in Wilmington, where they remained for several years. They moved their home to the Alamitos about the time that we came south to settle in Los Angeles. The intimate connection of double blood-kinship and of business association made the three families seem like one and us children like brothers and sisters. Our home in Los Angeles became the headquarters for the out-of-town relatives, and several times a week we had some of them for luncheon guests. On the other hand we of the town grasped every chance to spend a day, a week, or the long summer vacation at one of the adobes. All the festival days were shared. Cerritos claimed the Fourth of July most often, for its bare court yard offered a spot free from fire hazard. What a satisfying supply of fire-works our combined resources offered! There were torpedoes, safe for babies, fire-crackers of all sizes, double-headed Dutchmen, Chinese bombs,--to make the day glorious,--and, for the exciting evening (one of the two yearly occasions when I was permitted to stay up beyond bed-time) there were pinwheels that flung out beauty from the top of the hitching post, there were dozens of roman candles with their streams of enveloping fire, and luscious shooting stars, and sky-rockets that rose majestically with a disdainful shriek as they spurned the earth and took a golden road to the sky.