Excerpt from Old Californian Days There should rather be the tinkling of vesper-bells across long reaches of pasture lands. There should be flowing garments, and brown faces, and black eyes, and maidens with red roses In their braids. There should be old-world songs, and rustic dances, and the dim faint tinklings of guitar-strings in the night. There Should be processions, and wayside crosses, and all the simple ways of a people who do not learn or change, who believe what they are told, and who are content with what has been for a thousand years. There should be laden asses traversing rocky moun tain paths, and dusty footmen who hope sometime to reach their journey's end content, and women who sit and Spin in open doorways, and the brown robes of friars, and the shovel hats of priests; and over all that sweet content unknown in American life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.