Excerpt from Burton's Book on California and Its Sunlit Skies of Glory The main purpose in offering to the public the pages that follow is to make known to readers outside of California the attractiveness and beneficial effects of life inside of this Golden State. After more than a quarter of a century of newspaper work in the State, many readers of the "copy" produced by the author at frequent intervals suggested the publication of some of it in book form. Yielding to these suggestions, the author collected the best things he had to offer, and about the beginning of the current year undertook to test the sincerity of the admiration expressed by his friends. They stood the test in a manner which the author hopes will not add to his conceit, but will make everlastingly permanent his deep sense of gratitude for the depth and firmness of this friendship. To express it in exact terms is to state that in three months he sold the whole first edition of 1000 copies, and when the matter went to press about the end of March every book had been subscribed for. The author acted as his own book agent, and during the three months never went outside of the corporate limits of the city of Los Angeles. The name given this book requires more apology than the matter itself. It came in a perfectly natural way. Friends who had subscribed for a copy met others on the street and said, "Have you heard of Burton's book?" So one of the nearest and best friends of the author caught the inspiration and named the book for him. To those abroad who shall read the pages here offered and think there is a little too warm admiration expressed for "California and its sunlit skies of glory" the following quotation from a little talk made in January of this year before the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association of Los Angeles at an annual banquet is offered, not as an excuse, but as an explanation for the authors love of his adopted State: "I have lived in the State of California nearly all the time for the last forty-three years and of all these, thirty-five or more of them were spent here in Southern California, nearly all of them in Los Angeles - on this most fruitful of all soils, under these most brilliant skies of glory that shine upon the earth from pole to pole, from the meridian of Greenwich or that of Washington, around the equator to the place of beginning. My comment upon this important fact is that life here on these flower-decked mesas, beneath the shadows of these purple mountains, by the rippling music of these turquoise seas, among good people like these gathered around us here tonight, has been to me a more valuable asset than all the millions our friend John D. Rockefeller ever became possessed of, not to mention the millions the United States tried to fine him, but seems to have met with a little debacle in that enterprise. To make this more plain, let me say that forty-three years ago in June I had undergone an examination by three physicians. 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.

Examining California's formative years, this innovative study seeks to discover the origins of the California dream and the social, psychological, and symbolic impact it has had not only on Californians but also on the rest of the country.