There has been so much exaggeration about the wonders of California, that those who have caught from such one-sided accounts the fever of longing for the sunshine and free life, do not make allowance for this necessarily long pause before any income is possible from a ranch. Thus it comes to pass that so many ranches are mortgaged; and when a ranch is mortgaged, it is a hopeless business for the poor rancher who has worked so hard at his unaccustomed labour. It has been said that small fruit--berries of different kinds--may be grown meanwhile, and that the profits from these will help out the expenses until the ranch trees bear. If you are made of cast iron, you may possibly be able to give the necessary work to your ranch, and at the same time cultivate small fruit; but if you come from the ordinary comfortable middle-class at home, you cannot have the strength or resistance to stand this additional toil. I believe there is a vague but sanguine idea among those at home, bitten by the Californian fever, that you have only to plant trees or vegetables and then sit down comfortably in the sunshine and wait for them to grow, condescending eventually to put aside your book and your pipe for a little while, and gather in all the rich harvest which this wonderful climate has produced for you. This is not so. Ranching is really hard work, and moreover the greatest strain of the life to men coming from a different climate, is that all this unaccustomed labour has to be done in the hot glare of unbroken sunshine. (_To be continued._) VARIETIES. IT STRIKES ONE AS REMARKABLE. A train starts daily, let us say, from San Francisco to New York, and one daily from New York to San Francisco, the journey lasting seven days. How many trains will a traveller meet in journeying from San Francisco to New York? It appears obvious at the first glance that the traveller must meet seven trains--and that is the answer which will be given by nine girls out of ten to whom the question is new. The fact is overlooked that every day during the journey a fresh train is starting from the other end, whilst there are seven on the way to begin with. The traveller will, therefore, meet not seven trains but fourteen. THE TWO SACKS. "At our birth, the satirical elves Two sacks from our shoulders suspend: The one holds the faults of ourselves; The other, the faults of our friend. The first we wear under our clothes Out of sight, out of mind, at the back; The last is so under our nose, We know every scrap in the sack." _Imitated from Phædrus._ IN DEBT FOR EVER. A man who owes a shilling, proceeds to pay it at the rate of sixpence the first day, threepence the second day, three half-pence the next, three farthings the next, and so on--paying each day half the amount he paid the day before.