THE CALIFORNIACS

By Inez Haynes Irwin

California, which produces the maximum of scenery and the minimum ofweather; California, which grows the biggest men, trees, vegetables andfleas in the world, and the most beautiful women, babies, flowersand fruits; California, which, on the side, delivers a yearly crop ofathletes, boxers, tennis players, swimmers, runners and a yearly crop ofgeniuses, painters, sculptors, architects, authors, musicians, actors, producers and photographers; California, where every business man writesnovels, or plays, or poetry, or all three; California, which has spawnedthe Coppa, Carmel and San Quentin schools of literature; California, where all the ex-pugs become statesmen and all the ex-cons becomeliterateurs; California, the home of the movie, the Spanish mission, the golden poppy, the militant labor leader, the turkey-trot, thegrizzly-bear, the bunny-hug, progressive politics and most Americanslang; California, which can at a moment's notice produce an earthquake, a volcano, a geyser; California, where the spring comes in the fall andthe fall comes in the summer and the summer comes in the winter and thewinter never comes at all; California, where everybody is bornbeautiful and nobody grows old--that California is populated mainly withCaliforniacs. 

California, I repeat, is populated mainly with Californiacs; but theCaliforniacs are by no means confined to California. They have, indeed, wandered far afield. New York, for instance, has a colony so largethat the average New Yorker is well acquainted with the symptomsof California. The Californiac is unable to talk about anything butCalifornia, except when he interrupts himself to knock every other placeon the face of the earth. He looks with pity on anybody born outsideof California and he believes that no one who has ever seen Californiawillingly lives elsewhere. He himself often lives elsewhere, but henever admits that it is from choice. He refers to California always as"God's country", and if you permit him to start his God's country lineof talk, it is all up with intelligent conversation for the rest of theday. He will discourse on California scenery, climate, crops, athletes, women, art-sense, etc. , ad libitum, ad infinitum and ad nauseum. He isa walking compendium of those Who's Whosers who were born in California. He can reel off statistics which flatter California, not by the yard, but by the mile. And although he is proud enough of the ease andabundance with which things grow in California, he is even more proudof the size to which they attain. Gibes do not stop the Californiac, norjeers give him pause. He believes that he was appointed to talk aboutCalifornia. And Heaven knows, he does. He has plenty of sense of humorotherwise, but mention California and it is as though he were conductinga revival meeting. 

Once a party which included a Californiac were taking an evening stroll. Presently a huge full moon cut loose from the horizon and began a tourof the sky. Admiring comments were made. "I suppose you have them biggerin California, " a young woman observed slyly to the Californiac. He didnot smile; he only looked serious. Again, a Californiac mentioned to methat he had married an eastern woman. "Any eastern woman who marries aCalifornian, " I observed in the spirit of badinage, "really takes a verygreat risk. Her husband must always be comparing her with the beautifulwomen of his native state. " "Yes, " he answered, "I've often said to mywife, 'Lucy, you're a very pretty woman, but you ought to see some ofour San Francisco girls. '" "I hope, " I replied, "that she boxed yourears. " He did not smile; he only looked pained. Once only have I seenthe Californiac silenced. A dinner party which included a globe-trotter, were listening to a victim of an advanced stage of Californoia. He hadjust disposed of the East, South and Middle West with a few causticphrases and had started on his favorite subject. "You are certainly awonderful people, " the globe-trotter said, when he had finished. "Everylarge city in Europe has a colony of Californians, all rooting forCalifornia as hard as they can, and all living as far away as they canpossibly get. "

Myself, Californoia did not bother me for a long time after I firstwent to California. I am not only accustomed to an offensive insularpatriotism on the part of my countrymen, but, in addition, all my lifeI have had to apologize to them for being a New Englander. The statementthat I was brought up in Boston always produces a sad silence in mylisteners, and a long look of pity. Soft-hearted strangers do theirbest to conceal their tears, but they rarely succeed. I have reached thepoint now, however, where I no longer apologize for being a Bostonian;I proffer no explanations. I make the damaging admission the instant Imeet people and leave the matter of further recognition to them. If theychoose to consider that Boston bringing-up a social bar sinister, so beit. I have discovered recently that the fact that I happened to be bornin Rio Janeiro offers some amelioration. But nothing can entirelyremove the handicap. So, I reiterate, indurated as I am to pity, thecontemptuous attitude of the average Californiac did not at first annoyme. But after a while even I, calloused New Englander that I am, beganto resent it. 

This, for instance, may happen to you at any time in California--it isthe Californiac's way of paying the greatest tribute he knows:

"Do you know, " somebody says, "I should never guess that you were anEastener. You're quite like one of us--cordial and simple and natural. "

"But-but, " you say, trying to collect your wits against this left-handedcompliment, "I don't think I differ from the average Easterner. "

"Oh, yes, you do. You don't notice it yourself, of course. But I giveyou my word, nobody will ever suspect that you are an Easterner unlessyou tell it yourself. They really won't. "

"But-but, " you say, beginning to come back, "I have no objectionwhatever to being known as an Easterner. "

That holds her for a moment. And while she is casting about for phraseswith which to meet this extraordinary condition, you rally gallantly. "In fact, I am Proud of being an Easterner. "

That ends the conversation. 

Or somebody in a group asks you what part of the East you're from. 

"New York, " perhaps you reply. 

"New York. My husband came from New York, " she goes on. "He was broughtup there. But he's lived in California for twenty years. He got theidea a few years ago that he wanted to go back East. I said to him, 'Allright, we'll go back and visit for a while and see how you like it. ' Onemonth was enough for him. The people there are so cold and formal andconventional, and then, my dear, your climate!"

"Yes, " another takes it up. "When I was in the East, a friend invited meout to his place in the country. He wanted me to see his pine grove. Mydears, if you could have seen those little sticks of trees. "

"I went to New York once, " a third chimes in. "I never could getaccustomed to carrying an ice umbrella--I couldn't close it when I gothome. I'd come to stay for a month but I left in a week. "

And so it goes. No feeling on anybody's part of your sense of outrage. In fact, Californiacs always use the word eastern in your presence as asynonym for cold, conventional, dull, stupid, humorless. 

Sometimes it actually casts a blight--this Californoia--on those whocome to live in California. I remember saying once to a young man--justin passing and merely to make conversation: "Are you a native son?"

His face at once grew very serious. "No, " he admitted reluctantly. "Yousee, it was my misfortune to be born in Iowa, but I came out here tocollege. After I'd graduated I made up my mind to go into business here. And now I feel that all my interests are in California. Of course itisn't quite the same as being born here. But sometimes I feel as thoughI really were a native son. Everybody is so kind. They do everything intheir power to make you forget--"

"Good heavens, " I interrupted, "are you apologizing to me for being bornin Iowa? I've never been in Iowa, but nothing could convince me that itisn't just as good a place as any other place, including California. Thetrouble with you is that you've let these Californiacs buffalo you. Whatyou want to do is to throw out your chest and insist that God made Iowafirst and the rest of the world out of the leavings. "

If you mention the eastern winter to a Californiac, he tells you withgreat particularity of the dreadful storms he encountered there. Nothingwhatever about the beauty of the snow. To a Californiac, snow and iceare more to be dreaded than hell-fire and brimstone. If you mentionthe eastern summer, he refers in scathing terms to the puny trees weproduce, the inadequate fruits and vegetables. Nothing at all abouttheir delicious flavor. To a Californiac, beauty is measured only bysize. Nothing that England or France has to offer makes any impressionon the Californiac because it's different from California. As for theglory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, he simply neversees it. The Netherlands are dismissed with one adjective--flat. For acountry to be flat is, in the opinion of the Californiac, to relinquishits final claim to beauty. A Californiac once made the statement to methat Californians considered themselves a little better than the restof the country. I considered that the prize Californiacism until I heardthe following from a woman-Californiac in Europe: "I saw nothing inall Italy, " she said, "to compare with the Italian quarter of SanFrancisco. "

Now I am by no means a rabid New Englander. I love the New England sceneand I have the feeling for it that we all have for the place in whichwe played as children. Most New Englanders have a kind of temperamentalshyness. They are still like the English from whom they are descended. It is difficult for them to talk about the things on which they feelmost deeply. The typical New Englander would discuss his native placewith no more ease than he would discuss his father and mother. InCalifornia I often had the impulse to break through that inhibitingsilence--to talk about Massachusetts; the lovely, tender, tamed, domesticated country; its rolling, softly-contoured, maternal-lookinghills; its forests like great green cathedral chapels; its broad, placid rivers, its little turbulent ones; its springs and runnels andwaterfalls and rivulets all silver-shining and silver-sounding; themyriads of lakes and countless ponds that make the world look as thoughthe blue sky had broken and fallen in pieces over the landscape; thespring when first the arbutus comes up pink and delicate through thesnow and later the fields begin to glimmer with the white of whiteviolets, to flash with the purple of purple ones, and the childrenhang May baskets at your door; the summer when the fields are buriedknee-deep under a white drift of daisies or sealed by the gold planes ofbuttercups, and the old lichened stone walls are smothered in blackberryvines; the autumn with the goldenrod and blue asters; the woods likeconflagrations burning gold and orange, flaming crimson and scarlet;and especially that fifth season, the Indian summer, when the vistas aretunnels of blue haze and the air tastes of honey and wine; then winterand the first snow (does anybody, brought up in snow country, everoutgrow the thrill of the first fluttering flakes?) the marvel of thefairy frost world into which the whole country turns. 

Do you suppose I ever talked about Massachusetts? Not once. And so Ihave one criticism to bring against the Californiac. He is a person towhom you cannot talk about home. He grows restive the instant you getoff the subject of California. Praise of any other place to his mindimplies a criticism of California. 

On the other hand, that frenzied patriotism has its wonderful andits beautiful side. It is a result partly of the startling beauty andfecundity of California and partly of a geographical remoteness andsequestration which turned the Californians in on themselves foreverything. To it is due much of the extraordinary development ofCalifornia. For to the average Californian, the best is not only nonetoo good for California, but she can have nothing else. Californianseven those not suffering from an offensive case of Californoia--speak oftheir State in reverential terms. To hear Maud Younger--known everywhereas the "millionaire waitress" and the most devoted labor-fan in thecountry--pronounce the word California, should be a lesson to any actorin emotional sound values. The thing that struck me most on my firstvisit to California was that boosting instinct. In store windowseverywhere, I saw signs begging the passer-by to root for thisdevelopment project or that. Several years ago, passing down Marketstreet, I ran into a huge crowd gathered at the Lotta Fountain. Istopped to investigate. Moving steadily from a top to a lower window ofone of the newspaper offices, as though unwound from a reel, ran a longstrip of paper covered with a list of figures. To this list, new figureswere constantly added. They were the sums of money being subscribed atthat very moment for the Exposition. Applause and cheers greetedeach additional sum. That was the financial germ from which grewthe wonderful Arabian Nights city by the bay. It was typicallyCalifornian--that scene--and typically Californian the spirit back ofit. And four years later, when the outbreak of the war brought temporarypanic, there was no diminution in that spirit. Whether it was a"Buying-Day, " a "Beach Day, " an "Automobile Parade, " a "ProsperityDinner, " San Francisco was always ready to insist that everything wasgoing well. It was the same spirit which inspired a whole city, theday the Exposition opened, to rise early to walk to the grounds, and tostand, an avalanche of humanity, waiting for the gates to part. It wasthe same spirit which inspired the whole city, the night the Expositionended, to stay for the closing ceremonies until midnight, and then, without even picking a flower from the abundance they were abandoning, silently and sorrowfully to walk home. 

Let's look into the claims of these Californiacs. 

I can unfortunately say little about the State of California. For withthe exception of a few short trips away from San Francisco, and onemeager few days' trip into the South, I have never explored it. Nobodywarned me of the danger of such a proceeding, and so I innocently wentstraight to San Francisco the first time I visited the coast. Stranger, let me warn you now. If ever you start for California with the intentionof seeing anything of the State, do that before you enter San Francisco. If you must land in San Francisco first, jump into a taxi, pull down thecurtains, drive through the city, breaking every speed law, to "Thirdand Townsend, " sit in the station until a train, --some train, anytrain--pulls out, and go with it. If in crossing Market street, youraise that taxi-curtain as much as an inch, believe me, stranger, it'sall off; you're lost. You'll never leave San Francisco. Myself, bothtimes I have gone to California, I have vowed to see Yosemite, the bigtrees, the string of beautiful old missions which dot the state, someof the quaint, languid, semi-tropical towns of the south, some of thebrisk, brilliant, bustling towns of the north. But I have never reallydone it because I saw San Francisco first. 

I treasure my few impressions of the state, however. Towns and cities, comparatively new, might be three centuries old, so beautifully havethey sunk into the colorful, deeply configurated background that thecountry provides. Even a city as thriving and wide-awake as Stockton hasabout its plaza an air so venerable that it is a little like theancient hill-cities of Italy; more like, I have no doubt, the ancientplain-cities of Spain. And San Juan Bautista--with its history-hauntedold Inn, its ghost-haunted old Mission and its rose-filled old Missiongarden where everything, even the sundial, seems to sleep--is as old asBabylon or Tyre. 

You will be constantly reminded of Italy, although California is notquite so vividly colored, and perhaps of Japan, for you are alwayscoming on places that are startlingly like scenes in Japanese prints. Certain aspects from the bay of the town of Sausalito, with strangelyshaped and softly tinted houses tumbling down the hillside, certainaspects of the bay from the heights of Berkeley, with the expanses ofhills and water and the inevitable fog smudging a smoky streak here andthere, are more like the picture-country of the Japanese masters thanany American reality. 

If I were to pick the time when I should travel in California, it wouldbe in the early summer. All the rest of the world at that moment isgreen. California alone is sheer gold. One composite picture remains inmy memory-the residuum of that single trip into the south. On one sidethe Pacific--tigerish, calm, powerfully palpitant, stretching intoeternity in enormous bronze-gold, foam-laced planes. On the other side, great, bare, voluptuously--contoured hills, running parallel with thetrain and winding serpentinely on for hours and hours of express speed;hills that look, not as though they were covered with yellow grass, butas though they were carved from massy gold. At intervals come ravinesfilled with a heavy green growth. Occasionally on those goldenhill-surfaces appear trees. 

Oh, the trees of California!

If they be live-oaks--and on the hills they are most likely to belive-oaks--they are semi-globular in shape like our apple trees, onlyhuge, of a clamant, virile, poisonous green. They grow alone, and eachone of them seems to be standing knee-deep in shadow so thick and moistthat it is like a deep pool of purple paint. 

Occasionally, on the flat stretches, eucalyptus hedges film thedistance. And the eucalyptus--tall, straight, of a uniform slender size, the baby leaves of one shape and color, misted with a strange bluishfog-powder, the mature leaves of another shape and color, deep-greenon one side, purple on the other, curved and carved like a scimitar ofDamascus steel, the blossoms hanging in great soft bunches, whiteor shell-pink, delicate as frost-stars--the eucalyptus is the mostbeautiful tree in the world. Standing in groups, they seem to color theatmosphere. Under them the air is like a green bubble. Standing alone, the long trailing scarfs of bark blowing away from their bodies--theyare like ragged, tragic gypsy queens. 

Then there is the madrone. The wonder of the madrone is its bole. Ofa tawny red-gold--glossy--it contributes an arresting coppery note togreen forest vistas. Somebody has said that in the distance they looklike naked Indians slipping through the woods. 

Last, there is the redwood tree! And the redwood is more beautiful eventhan the stone-pine of Italy. Gray lavender in color, hard as thoughcut from stone, swelling at the base to an incredible bulk, shootingstraight to an incredible height and tapering exquisitely as it soars, it drops not foliage but plumage. To walk in a redwood forest at nightand to look up at the stars tangled in the tree-tops, to watch themoonlight sift through the masses of soft black-green feathers, down, down, until strained to a diaphanous tenuity it lies a faint silvergossamer at your feet, is to feel that you are living in one of the oldwoodcuts which illustrate Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream. "

Most people in first visiting California are obsessed with the flowers, the abundant callas, the monstrous roses, the giant geraniums. But Inever ceased to wonder at the beauty of the trees. And remember, I havenot as yet seen what they call the "big" trees. 

Yes, California is quite as beautiful as her poets insist and herpainters prove. It turns everybody who goes there into a poet, at leasttemporarily. Babes lisp in numbers and those of the native populationwho don't actually write poetry, talk it--no matter what the subject is. Take the case of Sam Berger. Sam Berger--I will explain for the benefitof my women readers--was first a distinguished amateur heavyweight boxerwho later became sparring partner for Bob Fitzimmons and manager to JimJeffries. In an interview on the subject of boxing, Mr. Berger said, "Boxing is an art--just as much so as music. To excel in it you musthave a conception of time, of balance, of distance. The man who attemptsto box without such a conception is like a person who tries to be amusician without having an ear for music. "

Is it not evident from this that Mr. Berger would have become a poet ifa more valiant art had not claimed him?

In that ideal future state in which all the world-parts are assembledand perfectly coordinated into one vast self-governing machine, I hopethat California will be turned into a great international reservation, given over entirely to poets, lovers and honeymoon couples. It is toobeautiful to waste on mere bromidic residential or business interests. 

So much for the State of California. I confess with shame that that isall I know about it, although I reiterate that that ignorance is not myfault. So now for San Francisco. 

San Francisco!

San Francisco!

Many people do not realize that San Francisco tips a peninsulaprojecting west and north from the coast of California. Between thatpeninsula and the mainland lies a blue arm of the blue San Franciscobay. So that when you have bisected the continent and come to whatappears to be the edge of the western world, you must take a ferry toget to the city itself. 

I hope you will cross that bay first at night, for there is no moreromantic hour in which to enter San Francisco; the bay spreading outback of you a-plash with all kinds of illuminated water craft and thecity lifting up before you ablaze with thousands of pin point lights;for San Francisco's site is a hilly one and the city lies like ajewelled mantle thrown carelessly over many peaks. You land at the Ferrybuilding--surely the most welcoming station in the world--walk throughit, come out at the other side on a circular place which is one end ofMarket street, the main artery of the city. If this is by day, you cansee that the other end of Market street is Twin Peaks--a pair ofhills that imprint bare, exquisitely shaped contours of gold on a bluesky--with the effect somehow of a stage-drop. If you come by night, youwill find Market street crowded with people, lighted with a display ofelectric signs second only in size, number, brilliancy and ingenuity tothose on Broadway. But whether you come by day or by night, the instantyou emerge from the Ferry building, San Francisco gets you. Marketstreet is one of the most entertaining main-traveled urban roads in theworld. Newspaper offices in a cluster, store windows flooded with light, filled with advertising devices of the most amusing originality, cars, taxis, crowds, it has all the earmarks of the main street of any bigAmerican city, with the addition, at intervals, of the pretty "islands"so typical of the boulevards of Paris and with, last of all, a zip anda zest, a pep and a punch, a go and a ginger that is distinctivelyCalifornian. I repeat that California throws her first tentacle intoyour heart as you stand there wondering whether you'll go to your hotelor, plunging headforemost into the crowds, swim with the current. 

Imagine a city built not on seven but a hundred hills. I am sure thereare no less than a hundred and probably there are more. Certainly Iclimbed a hundred. On three sides the sea laps the very hem of this cityand on one side the forest reaches down to its very toes. That is, whenall is said, the most marvelous thing about San Francisco--that thesea and forest come straight to its borders. And as, because of itspeninsula situation they form the only roads out, sea and forest areintegral parts of the city life. It accounts for the fact that you seeno city pallor in the faces on the streets and perhaps for the fact thatyou see so little unhappiness on them. On Sundays and holidays, crowdspour across the bay all day long and then, loaded with flowers andgreens, pour back all the evening long. As for flowers and greens, thehotels, shops, cafes, the little hole-in-the-wall restaurants are fullof them. They are so cheap on the streets that everybody wears them. Everybody seems to play as much as possible out of doors. Everybodyseems to sleep out of doors. Everybody has just come from a hike or isjust going off on one. Imagine a climate rainless three-quarters of theyear, which permits the workingman to tramp all through his vacationwith the impedimenta only of a blanket, moneyless if he will, but withthe certainty always that the orchards and gardens will provide-him withfood. 

Through the city runs one central hill-spine. From this crest, by day, you look on one side across the bay with its three beautiful islands, bare Yerba Buena, jeweled Alcatraz and softly-fluted Angel Island, allseemingly adrift in the blue waters, to Marin county. The waters of thebay are as smooth as satin, as blue as the sky, and they are slashedin every direction with the silver wakes left by numberless ferryboats. Those ferryboats, by the way, are extremely graceful; they look likewhite peacocks dragging enormous white-feather tails. By night thebay view from the central hill-spine shows the cities of Berkeley andOakland like enormous planes of crystal tilted against the distance, theferryboats illuminated but still peacock-shaped, floating on the blackwaters like monster toys of Venetian glass. In the background, risingfrom low hills, peaks the blue triangle of Mt. Diablo. In the foregroundreposes Tamalpais--a mountain shaped in the figure of a woman-lyingprone. The wooded slopes of Tamalpais form the nearest big playgroundfor San Franciscans--and Tamalpais is to the San Franciscan whatFujiyama is to the Japanese. Would that I had space to tell here ofthe time when their mountain caught fire and thousands--men, women andchildren--turned out to save it! Everybody helped who could. Even thebakers of San Francisco worked all night and without pay to make breadfor the fire-fighters. 

By day, on the city side of the crest, you catch glimpses of otherhills, covered for the most part with buildings, like lustrous pearlcubes; for San Francisco is a pearl-gray city. At night you canlook straight down the side streets to Market street on a series ofilluminated restaurant signs which project over the sidewalk at rightangles to the buildings. It is as though a colossal golden stairwaytempted your foot. 

Perhaps after all the most breath taking quality about San Franciscois these unexpected glimpses that you are always getting of beautifulhill-heights and beautiful valley-depths. Sunset skies like aerialbanners flare gold and crimson on the tops of those hills. City lights, like nests of diamonds, glitter and glisten in the depths of thosevalleys. Then the fogs! I have stood at my window at night and watchedthe ragged armies of the air drift in from the bay and take possessionof the whole city. Such fogs. Not distilled from pea soup like theLondon fogs; moist air-gauzes rather, pearl-touched and glimmering; sothick sometimes that it is as though the world had veiled herself inmourning, so thin often that the stars shine through with a delicatemuffled lustre. By day, even in the full golden sunshine of California, the view from the hills shows a scene touched here and there with fog. 

As for the hills themselves, steep as they are, street cars go up anddown them. What is more extraordinary, so do automobiles. The hillstreets are cobbled commonly; but often, for the better convenience ofvehicles, there is a central path of asphalt, smoothly finished. I haveseen those asphalt planes by day when a flood, first of rain and then ofsun, turned them to rivers of molten silver; I have seen them by nightwhen an automobile, standing at the hilltop and pouring its light overthem, turned them to rivers of molten gold. 

Within walking distance of the ferry is the heart of the city. Hereare the newspaper buildings, many big and little hotels, numberlessrestaurants, the theatres and the shopping district. The region aboutUnion Square, Geary street, Grant Avenue, Post and Sutter streets, isa busy and attractive area. You could live in San Francisco for a monthand ask no greater entertainment than walking through it. Beyond arevarious foreign quarters and districts inevitably growing colder andmore residential in aspect as they get farther away from the city heart. Beyond the heights where one catches glimpses of the ocean, the cityslopes to abrupt cliffs along the outer harbor, and here are mansionswhose windy gardens overhang the surf. Beyond Market street is the areadescribed in the phrase, "south of the slot". Superficially drab andgray in aspect, it has been celebrated again and again in song andstory. From this region have come the majority of San Francisco'schampion athletes. Near here beats the red heart of the labor world. And not far off still stands that exquisite gem of Spanishcatholicism--Mission Dolores. 

Here and there--and it is a little like meeting a ghost in a crowdedstreet--through all the beauty and freshness of the new city project thebones of the old: the lofty ruins, ivy-hung, of a huge Nob Hill Palacehere; the mere foundation, bush-encircled, of a big old family mansionthere; elaborate rusty fences of Mid-Victorian iron which enclosenothing; wide low steps of Mid-Victorian marble which lead nowhere. TheSan Franciscan speaks always with a tender, regretful affection ofthat dead city, but, as is natural, he speaks of it less and less. Formyself, I am glad now that I never saw the city that was; for I can lovethe city that is with no arriere pensee. 

They serve, however--those bones of a dead past--to remind the strangerof a marvelous rebuilding feat, to accent the virility and vitality, thecourage and enterprise of a people who, before a half decade had passed, had eliminated almost every trace of the greatest disaster of moderntime. 

Perhaps, after the beauty of its situation, the stranger is moststruck with the picturesqueness given to the city by its cosmopolitanatmosphere. For San Francisco, serving as one of the two main greatgateways to an enormous country, a front entrance to America from theOrient, a back entrance from Europe and a side entrance from SouthAmerica, standing halfway between tropics and polar regions, a greatport of the greatest ocean in the world, becomes naturally one of theworld's main caravanseries, a meeting place of nations. 

Chinatown is not far off from the heart of the city. And Chinatownpervades San Francisco. It is as though it distilled some faint orientalperfume with which constantly it suffuses the air. You meet the Chineseeverywhere. The men differ in no wise from the men with whom the smallerChinatowns of the East have acquainted us. The women make the streetsexotic. Little, slim-limbed creatures, amber-skinned, jewel-eyed, dressed in silk of black or pastel colors, loosely coated andcomfortably trousered, their jet-black shining hair filled withornaments, they go about in groups which include old women and youngmatrons, half-grown girls slender as forsythia branches, babies arrayedlike princes. You are likely to meet groups of Hindus, picturesquelyturbaned, coffee-brown in color, slight-figured, straight-featured, black-bearded. You see Japanese and Filipinos. And as forLatins--French, Italians and Spanish flood the city. There are eightthousand Montenegrins alone in California. I never suspected therewere eight thousand in Montenegro. And our own continent contributesCanadians, Mexicans, citizens from every State in the Union. Inaddition, you run everywhere into soldiers and sailors. The bits oftalk you overhear in the street are so exciting that you become aprofessional eavesdropper, strong-languaged, picturesquely slangy, pungent narrative. Sometimes the speaker has come up from Arizona, orNew Mexico or Texas, sometimes down from Alaska, Washington or Oregon, sometimes across from Nevada or Montana or Wyoming. And with many ofthem--at least with those that live west of the rocky mountains--SanFrancisco is always (and I never failed to respond to the thrill of it)"the city". Not a city or any city, but the city--as though there wereno other city on the face of the earth. 

All this alien picturesqueness adds enormously of course to the SanFranciscan's native picturesqueness. Not that the Californian needsadventitious aid in this matter. Indeed this cosmopolitanism ofatmosphere serves best as a background, these alien types as a foil, forthe native-born. For the Californians are a comely people. No travelerhas failed--at least no man has failed--to pay tribute in passing tothe Californian women. And they are beautiful. In that climate whichproduces bigness in everything, they grow to heroic size. And asa result of a life, inevitably open-air in an atmosphere alwaysfog-touched, they have eyes of a notable limpidity and complexions ofa striking vividness. To walk through that limited area which is thecity's heart--especially when the theatres are letting out--is to comeon beauty not in one pretty girl at a time, nor in pairs and trios, norby scores and dozens; it is to see it in battalias and acres, and allof them meeting your eyes with the frank open gaze of the West. SanFrancisco is, I fancy, the only city on the globe where any musicalcomedy audience is always more beautiful than any musical comedy chorus. They are not only beautiful--they are magnificent. 

Watch in the Admission Day parade for the Native Daughters of the GoldenWest--stalwart, stunning young giantesses marching with a splendidcarriage and a superb poise--they seem like a new race of women. 

And the climate being of such kind that, for three-quarters of the yearyou can count on unvarying sunny weather, the women dress on the streetswith nothing short of gorgeousness. All the colors that the rainbowknows and a few that it has never seen, appear here. And worn withsuch chic, such verve! Not even in Paris, where may appear a moreconventional smartness, is sartorial picturesqueness carried off withsuch an air of authority. Polaire, who was advertised as the ugliestwoman in the world, should have made a fortune in California. For theCalifornian does not really know what female ugliness is. I have atheory that the California men cannot quite appreciate the beauty oftheir women. They take beauty for granted; they have never seen anythingelse. Nevertheless, that beauty and that dash constitute a menace. Acity ordinance compels traffic policemen to wear smoked glasses, and carconductors and chauffeurs, blinders. Go West, young man!

But everybody celebrates the beauty of the Californian woman. Probablythat is because heretofore "everybody" has been masculine. He has beenso busy looking at the California woman that he hasn't realized yet thatthere's a male of the species. The California man, I sing. 

It is curious what a difference of opinion there is in regard to him. Ihave heard Californiacs say in their one moment of humility, "Why isit, when we turn out such magnificent women, that our men are soundersized?" Now I know nothing about average male heights and weights. I have never seen any comparative statistics. I can say only that theaverage Californian seems bigger than the average man. And often inwalking through the San Francisco streets the eye, ranging along thecrowd of pedestrians of average California stature, will strike on a manwho bulks a whale, a leviathan, a dread-naught, beside the others, andrises a column, a monolith, a tower above them. 

He is certainly upstanding, this average California male--running tobulk and a little to flesh. Often the line of feature is so regular thatit suggests the Greek. He has eyes like mountain lakes and a smile likea break of sun. He generally flashes a dimple or two or three or more(Californians are speckled with dimples). He manufactures his own slang. And he joshes and jollies all day long. In fact, he's--

Oh, well, go West, young woman!

Beyond its high average of male beauty California has, in its labor-man, produced a new physical type. It is different from the standardizedAmerican type, of which Abraham Lincoln of a past and the Wrightbrothers of a present generation are perfect specimens--theugly-beautiful face, long and lean, with its harshly contoured strengthof feature and its subtly softening melancholy of expression. Thelook of labor in California is not so much of strength as of force, anindomitable, unconquerable force. Melancholy is not there, but spirit;that fire and light which means hope. It is as though they were moldedof iron--those faces--but illuminated from within. And with thatstrength goes the California comeliness. 

Pulchritude begins in childhood with the Californian, grows andstrengthens through youth to middle age. Even the old--but there are noold people in California. Nobody ever gets a chance to grow old there. The climate won't let you. The scenery won't let you. The life won't letyou. 

All this picturesqueness, beauty and charm form the raw materials of themost entertaining city life in the country. For whatever San Franciscois or is not, it is never dull. Life there is in a perpetual ferment. It is as though the city kettle had been set on the stove to boil halfa century ago and had never been taken off. The steam is pouring out ofthe nose. The cover is dancing up and down. The very kettle is rockingand jumping. But by some miracle the destructive explosion neverhappens. The Californian is easy-going in a sense and yet he works hardand plays hard. Athletics are feverish there, suffrage rampant, politicsfrenzied, labor militant. Would that I had space here to dilate on theathletic game as it is played in California--played with the charm andspirit and humor with which Californians play every game. Would that Ihad space to narrate, as Maud Younger tells it--the moving story of howthe women won the vote in California. Would that I had space todescribe the whirlwind political campaigns when there are at least fourcandidates in the field for every office, and when you are besought bypostal, by letter, by dodgers, by advertisements in the papers and onthe billboards to vote for all of them. Would that I had space--but hereI must take the space--to tell how the Californian plays. 

Remember always that California has virtually no weather to contendwith. For three months of the year rain appears; for the remainingnine months it is eliminated entirely. And so, with a country of rarepicture-esqueness for a background, a people of rare beauty foractors, everybody more or less permeated with the artistic instinctand everybody more or less writing poetry--California has a pageant forbreakfast, a fiesta for luncheon and a carnival for dinner. They arealways electing queens. In fact any girl in California, who hasn't beena queen of something before she's twenty-one, is a poor prune. 

In the country, especially in the wine districts where the merrymakingsometimes lasts for days, these festivals are beautiful. In the cityit depends largely, of course, on how much the commercial spirit entersinto it; but whether they are beautiful or the reverse, they are alwaysentertaining. Single streets, for instance, in San Francisco, are alwayshaving carnivals. The street elects a king and queen, plasters itselfwith bunting, arches itself with electric lights, lines its curbs withtemporary booths, fills its corners with shows, sells confetti until thepedestrian swims in it--and then whoops it up for a week. All around, north, south, east, west, every other street is jet-black, sleepingdecorously, ignoring utterly that blare of color, that blaze of light, that boom of noise around the corner. They should worry--they're goingto have a carnival themselves next week. Apropos, a San Francisco paperopened its story of one of these affairs with the following sentence:"Last night (shall we call him Hans Schmidt?) was crowned with greatpomp and ceremony king of the--Street Carnival, and fifteen minuteslater, with no pomp and ceremony whatever, he was arrested for pettylarceny. " Billy Jordan was made King of the Fillmore Street Carnival. Now Billy Jordan, who was over eighty years of age, had served asannouncer for every big boxing contest in San Francisco since--well, let's say, since San Francisco was born. He always ends his ringannouncement with the words, "Let her go!" The reporters say that inthe crown and sceptre, the velvet and ermine of a king, he opened theFillmore Street Carnival with "Let her go!". And for myself, I chooseto believe that story. The queen of this carnival--her first name wasManila, by the way--a pretty girl of course, was a picturesque detail inthe city life for a week. In velvet, ermine and brilliant crown, she wasalways flashing from place to place in an automobile, surrounded by agroup, equally pretty, of ladies in waiting. When the deep, cylindricalcistern-like reservoir on Twin Peaks was finished, they opened it with adance; when the Stockton street tunnel was finished, they opened itwith a dance; when the morgue was completed they opened that with areception. 

The San Francisco papers reflect all this activity, and they certainlymake entertaining reading. For one thing, the annual crop of prettygirls being ten times as large there as anywhere else, and photographybeing universally a fine art, the papers are filled with pictures ofbeautiful women. They are the only papers I have ever seen in whichthe faces that appear on the theatrical page pale beside those thataccompany the news stories. The last three months of my stay inSan Francisco I cut out all the pictures of pretty girls from threenewspapers. They included all kinds of women--society, club, athletic, college, highbrow, low-brow; highway-women, burglaresses, forgeressesand murderesses. I have just counted those pictures three hundredand fifty-four--and all beautiful. When I received my paper in themorning--until the war made that function, even in California, amelancholy one--I used to look first at the pictures of the women. Thenalways I turned to the sporting page to see what record had been brokensince yesterday and, if it were Saturday morning (I confess it withoutshame), to read the joyous account of Friday night's boxing contest. And, always before I settled to the important news of the day, I readthe last "stunt". 

Picturesque "stunts" are always being pulled off in San Francisco. Was it the late lamented Beachey flying with a pretty girl around thehalf-completed Tower of Jewels, was it a pretty actress selling rosesat the Lotta Fountain for the benefit of the Belgians, it was somethingamusing, stirring and characteristic. Always the "stunt" involved a lotof pretty girls and often it demanded the services of the mayor. I shallregret to the end of my days that I did not keep a scrapbook devotedto Mayor Rolph's activities. For being mayor of San Francisco is nosinecure. But as most of his public duties seemed to involve floods ofpretty girls--well, if I were a man it would be my ambition to be mayorof San Francisco for the rest of my life. 

The year I spent in California they were building the Exposition. Theymade of that task, as they make of every task, a game and a play and alark--a joy and a delight--even though they were building under the mostdiscouraging conditions that an exposition ever encountered. But nothingdaunts the Californian, and so wood and iron, mortar and paint, grewsteadily into the dream city that later fronted the bay. 

As I think it over, I am very glad that I did not tell the Californiacshow beautiful Massachusetts is. Because it would only have bewilderedthem. I am glad that I did not mention to them that I shall alwayscherish a kind of feeling for Massachusetts that I can develop for noother spot. Because it would only have hurt them. You must not tella Californiac that you love any place but California or that you havefound beauty elsewhere. It's like breaking an engagement of marriagewith a girl. It's like telling a child that there's no such person asSanta Claus. There's no tactful way of wording it. It simply can't bedone. And I am very glad that I told the Californiacs all the timehow much I love California, how much I love San Francisco. For beauty, California is like the fresh, glowing, golden crescent moon; it iswaxing steadily to a noble fullness of development; and San Franciscois like the glittering evening-star; it fills the Pacific night with thehappy radiance of its light and life. I think of California always--withits unabated fighting strength--as a champion among States. It takes thestranger--that champion State--under its mighty protection and gives himof its strength and happiness. It is more fun to be sick in Californiathan to be well anywhere else. And I think of San Francisco always--thespirit of Tamalpais in the air--as an Amazon among cities. Its peoplelove "the city" because, within the memory of man it was built, andwithin the memory of child, rebuilt. They themselves helped to build andrebuild it. They have worked and fought for it through every inch andinstant of its history. It takes the stranger--that Amazon city--intoits great, warm, beating mother-heart. If you are sick it makes youwell. If you are sad it makes you glad. It infuses you with its workingspirit. It inspires you with its fighting spirit. It asks you to workand fight with it. Massachusetts never permitted me to work or fight forit. Woman is as yet, in no real sense, a citizen there. And the resultis that I love California as I love no other State, and San Franciscoas I love no other city. I have no real criticism to bring againstthe Californiac. In fact, reader--ah, I see you've guessed it. I'm aCaliforniac myself.