fences and gates where before we had ridden unchecked. It wasn’t so very long, however, before we became resigned to the town that had first called itself Willmore City and then Long Beach, though we did think it might have kept its own old name, Cerritos Beach. We liked the new hotel bath house which made dressing for a swim much easier than when we had had to run far down the beach to find a projection of bluff large enough to provide modest shelter. And we didn’t mind the Methodist Tabernacle with its summer Chautauqua, or the little shop where we could buy fruit, for we seemed to be getting over being children almost as fast as the new town was growing.
But whatever changes have come there has always been the sky, sunny or starry, or hidden by fog or passing cloud; the same mountains with their wonder of changing color guarded the valley. The old carpet of gorgeous wild flowers is gone; cities creep over the plain and a network of roads covers the earth; there is scarcely a place where one cannot see against the sky the fretted tower that means oil. One beauty goes and perhaps another comes for those who have eyes to see,—especially if they have a fair sized blind spot, which I find sometimes is a most satisfying possession.
The “old timers” wore just as powerful magnifying glasses when they looked at the future as do certain boosters today. They saw the possibilities of the development of this Southern California and prophesied in the face of vacant fields and an unprotected
