Excerpt from Los Angeles From the Mountains to the Sea: With Selected Biography of Actors It seems that, as a general custom, centuries old, a book must have what is known as a Preface. In former times, when a book was nothing if not ponderous, the Preface was a thing to daunt the reader at the very start; it was so big and so heavy, and it had such a serious countenance. For my part, I could never quite see the use of a Preface at all. If a man is'to tell a story - and every book, especially a narrative of history, is a story - why not begin at once with it, without any hems or haws, as the saying is? Still, there are times and instances when a Preface may well serve a good purpose; and it may be that this story of the Wonder City of Los Angeles is a case in point. Anyway, the publishers, eager and anxious that nothing should be left undone, have a serious conviction that there should be a Preface to this book, no matter What argument there might be as to any other. So, we must have a Preface to the Book of the Wonder City. But it will be a short Preface; it will be brief and with as little waste of words and time as possible, because no matter into whose hands whatever this book falls, he will be keen to get at it, and with as few by-paths as possible to travel. And what I have to say, therefore, prefatory to the book, is that it is the true story of a great City that was founded by order of the King, in the old days when the Western World was new. It is the story of a City that, for a century of time after its birth, showed few signs of promise, but which has now come to be the Greatest City of Western America and the metropolis of California - the Land 0' Heart's Desire. 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.