"ODD PEOPLE OF THE MOUNTAIN."
By Editor
WE notice in the San Francisco Examiner of October 24 a two-column article entitled "Odd People of the Mountain. A Queer Utopian Community in a Quiet Vale near St. Helena Who Care Not for the World. Dance with a Swinging Motion. Men and Women Who Are Like Good Children—without Avarice, Enmity, or Ambition, Yet Prosperous." The article purports to be an interview with Mrs. E. P. Buckingham, of Vacaville, known as the queen of California fruit growers, by a reporter of the Examiner, and the institution referred to is the St. Helena Medical and Surgical Sanitarium, known as the Rural Health Retreat, and also as Crystal Springs. In some respects the description is true to life, especially as regards the kindliness, faithfulness, and absolute equality manifested among the managers and employes of the institution, for they are Christians; but the article contains many expressions which convey altogether wrong ideas, and which we fear may do injustice to the sanitarium. We have been there ourself, and we are acquainted with the management of the institution. The community is not Altrurian in the sense in which the word is generally understood. The institution is carried on by a stock company formed for the purpose of treating the sick and furnishing a home for those who desire such rest and treatment as the sanitarium has shown itself thoroughly capable of giving. All the physicians, managers, and employes receive regular wages according to their labor and merits. The treatment is thoroughly first class and according to the most advanced and best established ideas in medical science. Much use is made of various kinds of baths, Swedish movements, electrical movements, and a liberal hygienic diet. In the surgical line it has had a remarkable record; among the many cases which have been operated upon during the last two years we believe there has not been a single death, and there have been many difficult cases. While there is a true Altrurianism, founded on the principles of the gospel of Christ, it certainly is not found in the dreams of Howells or Bellamy. "The dance with the swinging motion" is simply the gymnastic exercises, which are taken for health on the part of students and such patients as need them, and which are found in all of the best established schools of the land. Taken on the whole, the article will provoke inquiry, but we felt, as a friend to the institution, that it was our duty to correct, so far as our influence goes, some of the wrong ideas that are given in the article in question.