Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/238

 Cornelia's religious bias, contained in the following paragraph:—

"Don't be afraid," she wrote, "of going to southern California in July. The climate is delightfully right, if only one stays near enough to the coast. I have been hoping for years to spend a summer there, but have always had to give it up because my cousin Ethelwyn lives there! Such a pity: she has a charming Spanish house—Spanish with American improvements—in a walnut grove, with a 'kitchen garden' of orange and fig trees, near a little village ten or fifteen miles north of San Diego. But she—I have told you something about her, haven't I?—she is a Theosophist or a Bahaist or one of those dreadful things that Boston Unitarians become infected with when they live long in California. And the people she has around her—well, fond as I am of her, I myself find them impossible; and Oliver always used to say that he would 'rather be dd to all eternity with Voltaire than spend ten minutes in Heaven with Ethelwyn.' Well, poor dear Ethelwyn has just had a chance to join a pilgrim ship, which is going by way of China and India to visit some 'saint' in—I think—Arabia; and she has offered me the place, together with all the servants, for a year.