CHAPTER II.
AT CORONADO BEACH.
I associate Coronado Beach so closely with Warner (Charles D.), the cultured and cosmopolitan, that every wave seems to murmur his name, and the immense hotel lives and flourishes under the magic of his rhetoric and commendation.

Just as Philadelphia is to me Wanamakerville and Terrapin, so Coronado Beach is permeated and lastingly magnetized by Warner's sojourn here and what he "was saying." But I must venture to find fault with his million-times-quoted adjective "unique" as it is used.

It has been stamped on stationery and menu cards, and has gone the world over in his volume "Our Italy," and no one ever visits this spot who has not made the phrase his own.

To me it deserves a stronger word, or series of words.

We say a pretty girl has a "unique" way of dressing her hair, or an author a "unique" way of putting things.
But as I look out of my window this glorious morning, and watch the triple line of foaming waves breaking on the long beach, a silver sickle in the sunshine; the broad expanse of the Pacific, with distant sails looking like butterflies apoise; Point Loma grandly guarding the right, and farther back the mountain view, where snowy peaks can just be discerned over the nearer ranges; the quiet beauty of the grounds below, where borders and ovals and beds of marguerites contrast prettily with long lines and curves of the brilliant marigolds; grass, trees, and hedges green as June--a view which embraces the palm and the pine, the ocean and lofty mountains, cultivated gardens and rocky wastes, as I see all this, I for one moment forget "unique" and exclaim, "How bold, magnificent, and unrivalled!" Give me a new and fitting adjective to describe what I see.