epidemic of plague in California and shows us clearly the danger of allowing rats to live anywhere about the abode of man. They are a constant source of danger, for they travel from house to house and spread the infection wherever they go. No person should be content with one alive on their premises or on their neighbors, and total anihalation is our only safety. "The rat must go!" should be taught in pulpit, school and home.

How shall it be done? By starvation and allowing them no breeding place. Leave nothing on which they can feed. The waste from the table which is thrown out on the ground or into some open barrel or box is the great food for rats. Garbage must always be put in tightly covered cans. Never leave it so they can reach it. Chicken yards are a feeding ground and should be made rat proof. Many a chicken would be saved and a great source of living, for the rats cut off. This can be easily done for more below the surface and putting a small meshed wire netting or metal fence to four feet above the groundThis would be necessary only around the feeding yard.

All grain should be kept, from their reach, as etables and Busines place should and fruit. be made rat proof, and in the fo

doubt will be, but until that time comes no rubbish should be allowed to accumulate, for in it they hide and raise their young.

The motto of everyone should be, Clean up! Clean up! Clean up! There is hardly a house that would, in all its details, pass a sanitary muster, and the work of putting our State in a safe condition to withstand the plague must fall apon the householder. Teachers can spend a few minutes each day to no better advantage than teaching the doctrine of rat destruction and clean homes. We have spoken of rats alone, but this should be taken to mean mice as wel! They are subject to the same diseases and are only less dangerous in that they are less migratory. Squirrels and rabbits are also subject to plague, and in a less degree, so are cats and dogs.

Some time we may speak of other diseases spread by animals, but just now when plague is in our midst and might become a serious menace not only to our lives but to our commercial interests, all our attention should be centered on its extermination.

School Folks Magazine Department.

T. W. SPAULDING, Editor

A Word of Explanation.

BY THE EDITOR.

In becoming a department in the Western Journal of Education, the state official organ of the Board of Education, School Folks Magazine will be conducted on a slightly different plan, being now a supplement instead of an independent magazine.

We will aim to make this supplement both interesting and instructive. The services of Mr. Alfred Skaife, PresiIdent of the A. A. L., has been secured to edit the Athletic Department as its Honorary editor. Through this department we hope to get in close touch with the students. We will enter into the spirit of their contests with interest and enthusiasm.

The Literary contests will be discontinued for a time. The Department, Places of Interest I Have Visited in the West, will be kept up.

Eucalyptus.

By B. B. S.

Though bluish leaves like scimitars do cross and flash.

And toss and dash,

These sylvan blades speak peace not strife-new lease of life

Each tiny sabre, from whose edge blood seems to drip

By beams that dip

And color warm, was kissed instead, a rosy red—

Beams from the golden eye of day, set bark ablaze,

And met amaze,

In mortal man to see the trunk peel red and tan.

Think not the red, and tattered air of bark thus stripped, And newly ripped—

Means aught of war or carnage drear-have no such fear.

It is of health and peace and life that this tree speaks—
And nature seeks,

To waft the pungent odors far-from hill to star.

The Home of the Mission Fathers.

BY BLANCHE SHOEMAKER, ORANGE, CALIF.

(Submitted as a place of interest I have visited in the West).

That the old California days of romance and ease are fast disappearing before our hustling new western civilization, is a well known fact.

Not all the witchery of the olden times is gone, however, for the California climate remains the same and this unconsciously influences even the most practical transplanted easterner to delight in the beauty of sunny skies and blooming flowers.

In the midst of all this new life and seemingly undisturbed lies a beautiful valley, the old home ideal of the Mission Fathers, San Juan Capistrano sleeps peacefully on 'neath the bluest of skies, wrapt in the shimmering golden light of an old romantic age. Here life was once the gayest, here love was once the sweetest, here hospitality was the most princely and here priests were the most pious.

That was when the old mission garden bloomed with flowers and fruits and the chiming bells called to daily prayers.

Today one sees in Capistrano nothing but the peacefulness of modest cottages, adobe huts and wide streets bordered by narrow board walks, and a little to the left of the town the old ruined mission of San Juan.

Last winter, with a party of tourists, I visited this old mission. As we entered the now sadly neglected garden, by means of an ancient wooden gate, the very mystery and languor of those early days seemed to become a part of us.

The magic spell was unconsciously about us as we passed with light feet and hushed voices up the path of the outer court. Even the birds that lived in the nooks and crannies flew silently by and we were oppressed by the reigning stillness.

As though trying to hide their growing infirmities the

green ivy clung faithfully to the crumbling columns. Yet here and there down the colonade were massive doors defying the touch of Time. For more than a century they had stood guard over the mission treasures.

Down the ivy-clad colonnade we followed our guide, an irresponsive Mexican boy. Under his knowing hand the great door of the chapel slowly yielded and we were admitted to that once glorious shrine of the early Mexicans.

There stood the altar with its cloth of gold and behind it the scarred images of the Saint and the Virgin. Around these keeping their silent watch were antique candlesticks and vases of withered flowers.

The walls of the chapel were adorned with the now moldering paintings of the "Life of Christ". Before the largest of these, "Christ's Descent from the Cross", we paused. All the depths of our natures responded to its silent call for reverence, and we passed with a prayer on our lips.

An old baptismal font, curiously carved and quaint, was found in an adjoining room, brought, the guide told us, to the mission in its earliest days.

In other rooms were relics and mementoes of that time when the life of the mission was at its height. Now dark, dank and seldom used these old rooms are holding their own death watch.

We were glad to get out once more into the bright sunshine and the life that is, yet, even the inner court was eloquent with silence. Through the weeds and over crumbling walls we pick