green and white embroidered thistle,—a curious memento of a murdered president.
But I have been lured by memories of processions as is a small boy by martial music, away from my ordered account of where I have lived in Los Angeles. The second year we moved to the Shepherd house, (so-called because of its owner), where presently my brother, Llewellyn Bixby, junior, in direct answer to my prayers, came through the ceiling of the front bedroom straight into the apron of Mrs. Maitland,—a two-day-late birthday present for me. So I was told. My sceptical faculty was dormant.
This house still stands at the top of the precipice made by the cutting of First Street between Hill and Olive Streets.
The lot in front was very steep, with zig-zag paths and terraces, in one of which was a grove of banana trees, where fruit formed, but, owing to insufficient heat, never ripened well. Do you know the cool freshness of the furled, new, pale green leaves? Or how delightful it is to help the wind shred the old ones into fringe? One by one the red and gray covers for the circled blossoms drop, and make fetching little leather caps for playing children.
In those days the hill had not been hacked away to make streets, and where now is a great gash to let First Street through there was then a breezy, open hill-top, whereon grew brush and wild-flowers. The poppies in those days were eschscholtzias (the learning to spell the name was a feat of my eighth year),
