Snow and Flowers by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 4, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 14.

Snow and Flowers.

By Editor

While a cold wave is sweeping over the great East from the Rockies to the Atlantic, burying field and lake in snow and ice, California is enjoying all the beauties of spring time, clad in robes of green, adorned and garlanded by an endless variety of wild flowers of every hue. The vernal beauty of this great State has been emphasized to us by a recent business trip through a portion of two of its most beautiful sections, namely, Napa Valley and the valley of the Russian River. Our course was up the Napa Valley to St. Helena, over the divide to Healdsburg, and from the latter place to San Francisco by the California Northwestern Railway. It is a most inviting country, whether on hill or mountain, in valley or cañon. Monday morning we climbed the hill back of the Students' Home at Healdsburg, and drank in for a time the beauties of the landscape. Mountain and valley, hill and plain spread before us in one grand cyclorama, in which there was no monotony or sameness. The low-bending azure of the dome above, in which a few fleecy clouds were sailing as pleasure ships, the emerald carpet beneath, adorned with a flora as numerous as the stars and as variegated as the colors of a rainbow, while bunched like huge bouquets all over the broad expanse were the white or pink blossoms of prune and peach orchards, all united to make a picture to which no brush could do justice. And yet along the line of the above railway there are numerous views equally interesting, instructive, entrancing, and restful.

"God made the country, while man made the town." O ye country dwellers, be content; ye have pictures far surpassing all the works of art of which the city boasts, and glories and beauties which the city can never know! Learn from nature the great lesson that nature's God would teach.