Some men have an eye for trees and an inborn sympathy with these rooted giants, as if the same sap ran in their own veins. To them trees have a personality quite as animals have, and, to be sure, there are "characters" among trees. I knew a solitary yellow pine which towered in the landscape, the last of its race. Its vast columnal trunk seemed to loom and expand as one approached. Always there was distant music in the boughs above, a noble strain descending from the clouds. Its song was more majestic than that of any other tree, and fell upon the listening ear with the far-off cadence of the surf, but sweeter and more lyrical, as if it might proceed from some celestial harp. Though there was not a breeze stirring below, this vast tree hummed its mighty song. Apparently its branches had penetrated to another world than this, some sphere of increasing melody. C.H. KIRKHAM, in _In the Open._ JULY 20. You will think the gentlemen were fine dandies in those Mexican days, when I tell you that they often wore crimson velvet knee trousers trimmed with gold lace, embroidered white shirts, bright green cloth or velvet jackets with rows and rows of silver buttons and red sashes with long streaming ends. Their wide-brimmed _sombreros_ (hats) were trimmed with silver or gold braid and tassels. * * * Each gentleman wore a large Spanish cloak of rich velvet or embroidered cloth, and if it rained, he threw over his fine clothes a _serape_, or square woolen blanket, with a slit cut in the middle for the head. ELLA M. SEXTON, in _Stories of California._ JULY 21. ON THE PLANTING OF THE TREES AT THE PACIFIC THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, OAKLAND. And what shall be the children's tree, To grow while we are sleeping? The maple sweet; the manzanete; The gentle willow weeping; The larch; the yew; the oak so true, Kind mother strong and tender; Or, white and green, in gloss and sheen, Queen Magnolia's splendor? One wan, hot noon. His path was strewn, Whose love did all love quicken, With leaves of palm while song and psalm Held all the world to listen. For His dear sake, the palm we'll take-- Each frond shall be a prayer That He will guide, whate'er betide, Until we meet Him there. CHARLES J. WOODBURY. JULY 22. The landscape, glazed with heat, seemed to faint under the unwinking glare of the sun. From the parched grass-land and the thickets of chaparral, pungent scents arose--the ardent odors that the woods of foot-hill California exhale in the hot, breathless quiescence of summer afternoons. * * * The air came over it in glassy waves, carrying its dry, aromatic perfume to one's nostrils. On its burnt expanse a few huge live-oaks rose dark and dome-like, their shadows, black and irregular, staining the ground beneath them. GERALDINE BONNER, in _The Pioneer._ JULY 23.