The Smiling Hill-Top, and Other California Sketches

A series of informal sketches recounts a family's experiences after relocating from New England to Southern California, blending descriptive passages about coastal hilltops, gardens, and climate with wry domestic anecdotes. The pieces shift between lyrical nature observation and humorous reports of household life — servants, quarrelsome neighborhood dogs, small adventures, and the practical oddities of rural service and deliveries — while touching on travel impressions, solitary moments, and the pleasures and irritations of adapting to a new region. The collection reads as a mosaic of episodic vignettes rather than a single continuous narrative.