The Cliff House has a Sorrento setting and hectic turkey-trotting nightsThe Cliff House has a Sorrento setting and hectic turkey-trotting nights
"There," said our acquaintance. "A few years back you'd have seen this in almost any town out here, but things are changing; I don't know another place on this whole line that shows off its red light district the way Elko does."
After looking for a time at the sinister lights, we re-crossed the railroad track. As we stepped up to the platform, two figures coming in the opposite direction rounded the rear car and, crossing the rails, moved away towards the illuminated region. I heard their voices; they were the red haired woman and the man who had met her at the train.
Was she a new arrival? I think not, for she seemed to know the man, and she had, somehow, the air of getting home. Was she an "inmate" of one of the establishments? Again I think not, for, with her look of hardness, there was also one of capability, and more than any one thing it is laziness and lack of capability which cause sane women to give up freedom for such "homes." No; I think the woman from the train was a proprietor who had been away on a vacation, or perhaps a "business trip."
Suppose that to be true. Suppose that she had been away for several weeks. What was her feeling at seeing, again, the crimson beacon in her own window?What must it be like to get home, when home is such a place? Could one's mental attitude become so warped that one might actually look forward to returning—to being greeted by the "family"? Could it be that, at sight of that red light, flaring over there across the tracks, one might heave a happy sigh and say to oneself: "Ah! Home again at last! There's no place like home"—?
One thing the Western Pacific Railroad does that every railroad should do. It publishes a pamphlet, containing a relief map of its system, and a paragraph or two about every station on the line, giving the history of the place (if it has any), telling the altitude, the distance from terminal points, and how the town got its name.
From this pamphlet I judge that some one who had to do with the building of the Western Pacific Railroad, or at least with the naming of stations on the line, possessed a pleasantly catholic literary taste. Gaskell, Nevada, one stopping place, is named for the author of "Cranford"; Brontë, in the same State, for Charlotte Brontë; Poe, in California, for Edgar Allan Poe; Twain for Mark Twain; Harte for Bret Harte, and Mabie for Hamilton Wright Mabie. Other stations are named for British Field Marshals, German scientists, American politicians and financiers, and for old settlers, ranches, and landmarks.
Had there not been washouts on the line shortly before we journeyed over it, I might not have known so much about this little pamphlet, but during the night, when I could not sleep because of the violent rocking of the car, I read it with great care. Thus it happened that when, towards morning, we stopped, and I raised my curtain to find the ground covered with a blanket of snow, I was able to establish myself as being in the Sierras, somewhere in the region of the Beckwith Pass—which, by the way, is by two thousand feet, the lowest pass used by any railroad entering the State of California.
Some time before dawn the roadbed became solid and I slept until summoned by my companion to see the cañon of the Feather River.
Dressing hurriedly, I joined him at the window on the other side of the car (I have observed that, almost invariably, that is where the scenery is), and looked down into what I still remember as the most beautiful cañon I have ever seen.
The last time I had looked out it had been winter, yet here, within the space of a few hours, had come the spring. It gave me the feeling of a Rip Van Winkle: I had slept and a whole season had passed. Our train was winding along a serpentine shelf nicked into the lofty walls of a gorge at the bottom of which rushed a mad stream all green and foamy. Above, the mountains were covered with tall pines, their straight trunks reaching heavenward like the slender columns of a Gothic cathedral, the roof of which was made of low-hung,stone-gray cloud—a cathedral decked as for the Easter season, its aisles and altars abloom with green leaves, and blossoms purple and white.
Throughout the hundred miles for which we followed the windings of the Feather River Cañon, our eyes hardly left the window. Now we would crash through a short, black tunnel, emerging to find still greater loveliness where we had thought no greater loveliness could be; now we would traverse a spindly bridge which quickly changed the view (and us) to the other side of the car. Now we would pass the intake of a power plant; next we would come upon the plant itself, a monumental pile, looking like some Rhenish castle which had slipped down from a peak and settled comfortably beside the stream.
Once the flagman who dropped off when the train stopped, brought us back some souvenirs: a little pink lizard which, according to its captor, suited itself to a vogue of the moment with the name of Salamander; and a piece of glistening quartz which he designated "fools' gold." And presently, when the train was under way again, we saw, far down at the water's edge, the "fools" themselves in search of gold—two old gray-bearded placer-miners with their pans.
At last the walls of the cañon began to melt away, spreading apart and drifting down into the gentle slope of a green valley starred with golden poppies. Spring had turned to summer—a summer almost tropical, for, at Sacramento, early in the afternoon, we saw openstreet-cars, their seats ranged back-to-back and facing outwards, like those of an Irish jaunting-car, running through an avenue lined with a double row of palms, beneath which girls were coming home from school bareheaded and in linen sailor suits.
Imagine leaving New York on a snowy Christmas morning, and arriving that same afternoon in Buffalo, to find them celebrating Independence Day, and you will get the sense of that transition. We had passed from furs to shirtsleeves in a morning.
Late that afternoon, we left the valley and began to thread our way among the Coast Range hills—green velvet hills, soft, round and voluptuous, like the "Paps of Kerry." We were still amongst them when the sun went down, and it was night when we arrived at the terminal in Oakland.
Leaving the train in Oakland, one is reminded of Hoboken or Jersey City in the days before the Hudson Tubes were built. There is the train shed, the throng headed for the ferry, the baggage trucks, and the ferryboat itself, like a New York ferryboat down to its very smell. Likewise the fresh salt wind that blows into your face as you stand at the front of the boat, in crossing San Francisco Bay, is like a spring or summer wind in New York Harbor. So, if you cross at night, you have only the lights to tell you that you are not indeed arriving in New York.
The ferry is three miles wide. There are no skyscrapers, with lighted windows, looming overhead, as they loom over the Hudson. To the right the myriad lamps of Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda are distributed along the shore, electric trains dashing in front of them like comets; and straight ahead lies San Francisco—a fallen fragment of the Milky Way, draped over a succession of receding hills.
Crossing the ferry I tried to remember things I had been told of this city of my dreams, and to imagine what it would be like. Of course I had been warnedtime and again not to refer to it as "'Frisco," and not to speak of the Earthquake, but only of the Fire. I had those two points well in mind, but there were others out of which I endeavored to construct an imaginary town.
San Francisco was, as I pictured it in advance, a city of gaiety, gold money, twenty-five cent drinks, flowers, Chinamen, hospitality, night restaurants, mysterious private dining rooms, the Bohemian Club, open-hearted men and unrivaled women—superb, majestic, handsomely upholstered, six-cylinder self-starting blondes, with all improvements, including high-tension double ignition, Prestolite lamps, and four speeds forward but no reverse.
That is the way I pictured San Francisco, and that, with some slight reservations, is the way I found it.
Several times in the course of these chapters, I have been conscious of an effort to say something agreeable about this city or that, but in the case of San Francisco, I find it necessary to restrain, rather than force my appreciation, lest I be charged with making noises like a Native Son.
The Native Sons of the Golden West is a large and semi-secret organization of men born in California who, I was informed, are banded together to help one another and the State. Its activities are largely political and vocal.
It was a Native Son who, when asked by an Englishman, visiting the United States for the first time, toname the Seven Wonders of America, replied: "Santa Barbara, Coronado, Del Monte, San Francisco, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe and Mount Shasta."
"But," objected the visitor, "all those places are in California, aren't they?"
"Ofcoursethey're in California!" cried the Native Son. "Where else would they be?"
That is the point of view of the Native Son and the native Californian in general. Meeting Californians outside their State, I have been inclined to think them boasters, but now, after a visit to California, I have come to understand that they are nothing of the kind, but are, upon the contrary, adherents of cold truth. They want to tell the truth about their State, they try to tell it, and if they do not succeed it is only because they lack the power of expression. When it comes to California everybody does—a fact which I shall now assist in demonstrating further.
Take, for instance, the climate. The exact nature of the California climate had been a puzzle to me. I had been in the habit of considering certain parts of the country as suited for winter residence, and certain other parts for summer; but, in the East, when I asked people about California, I found some who advised it as a winter substitute for Florida, and others who recommended it as a summer substitute for Maine.
Therefore, on reaching San Francisco, I took pains to cross-examine natives as to what they meant by "climate."
The salt-water pool, Olympic Club, San FranciscoThe salt-water pool, Olympic Club, San Francisco
As I did not visit Southern California I shall leave the climate of that section to the residents, who are not only willing to describe it, but who, from all accounts, can come as near doing it adequately as anybody can. But in San Francisco and the surrounding country I think I know what climate means.
There are two seasons: spring, beginning about November and running on into April; autumn, beginning in April and filling out the remaining six months. Winter and summer are simply left out. There is no great cold (snow has fallen but six times in the history of the city) and no great heat (84 degrees was the highest temperature registered during an unusual "hot spell" which occurred just before our visit). It is, however, a celebrated peculiarity of the San Francisco climate that between shade and sun there is a difference so great as to make light winter clothing comfortable on one side of the street, and summer clothing on the other. The most convenient clothing, upon the whole, I found to be of medium weight, and as soon as the sun had set I sometimes felt the need of a light overcoat.
One of the finest things about the California weather is its absolute reliability. In the rainy season of spring, rain is expected and people go prepared for it; but with the arrival of the sunny season, the rain is really over, and thereafter you need not fear for your straw hat or your millinery, as the case may be.
Small wonder that the Californian loves to talk abouthis climate. He loves to discuss it for the same reason the New Yorker loves to discuss money: because, with him, it is the fundamental thing. All through the West, but particularly on the Pacific Coast, men and women alike lead outdoor lives, compared with which the outdoor lives of Easterners are labored and pathetic. The man or woman in California who does not know what it is to ride and camp and shoot is an anomaly. Apropos of this love of outdoors, I am reminded that the head of a large department store informed me that, in San Francisco, rainy days bring out the largest shopping crowds, because people like to spend the sunny ones in the open. Also, I noticed for myself, that small shopkeepers think so much of the climate that in many instances they cannot bear to bar it out, even at night, but have permanent screen fronts in their stores.
All the year round, flowers are for sale at stands on corners, in the San Francisco streets, and if you think we have nogenrein America, if you think there is nothing in this country to compare with your memories of picturesque little scenes in Europe—scenes involving such things as the dog-drawn wagons of Belgium; Dutch girls in wooden shoes, bending at the waist to scrub a sidewalk; embroidered peasants at a Breton pardon; proud beggars at an Andalusian railway station; mysterious hooded Arabs at Gibraltar; street singers in Naples; flower girls in the costume of thecampagna, at the Spanish Steps in Rome—if you think we cannot match such bits of color, then you should see the flowerstands of San Francisco upon some holiday, when Chinese girls are bargaining for blooms.
But I am talking only of this one part of California. When one considers the whole State, one is forced to admit that it is a natural wonder-place. It is everything. In its ore-filled mountains it is Alaska; to the south it is South America; I have looked out of a train window and seen a perfect English park, only to realize suddenly that it had not been made by gardeners, but was the sublimated landscape gardening which Nature gave to this state of states. I have eaten Parisian meals in San Francisco and drunk splendid wines, and afterwards I have been told that our viands and beverages had, without exception, been produced in California—unless one counts the gin in the cocktail which preceded dinner. But that is only part of it. With her hills San Francisco is Rome; with her harbor she is Naples; with her hotels she is New York. But with her clubs and her people she is San Francisco—which, to my mind, comes near being the apotheosis of praise.
So far as I know American cities San Francisco stands out amongst them like some beautiful, fascinating creature who comes suddenly into a roomful of mediocrities. She is radiant, she has charm and allure, those qualities which are gifts of the gods, and which, though we recognize them instantly when we meet them, we are unable to describe.
I have not forgotten the charm of Detroit, nor the stupendousness of Chicago, but—there is only one Parisand only one San Francisco. San Francisco does not look at all like Paris, and while it has a large foreign population the people one meets are, for the most part, pure-blooded Americans, yet all the time I was there, I found myself thinking of the place as a city that was somehow foreign. It is full of that splendid vigor which one learns to expect of young American cities; yet it is full of something else—something Latin. The outlook upon life even of its most American inhabitants is touched with a quality that is different. The climate works its will upon them as climate does on people everywhere. Here it makes them lively and spontaneous. They are able to do more (including more sitting up at night) than people do in New York, and it seems to tell upon them less. They love good times and, again owing to the climate, they are able to have them out of doors.
The story of the Portola fête, as told me by a San Franciscan, nicely illustrates that, and also shows the San Francisco point of view.
"In 1907," he informed me, "we decided to put over a big outdoor New Year's fête, with dancing in the streets, the way they have it in Paris on the Fourteenth of July. But at the last minute it rained and spoiled the outdoor part of the fun. Once in a while, you see, that can happen even in San Francisco.
"Everybody agreed that we ought to have a regular established festival, and as we didn't want to have it spoiled a second time, we hunted up the weather recordsand found that in the history of the city there had never been rain between October seventeenth and twenty-ninth. That established the time for our fête; the next thing was to discover an excuse for it. That was not so easy. After digging through a lot of history we found that Don Caspar de Portola discovered San Francisco Bay October twenty-second, 1679—or maybe it was 1769—that doesn't matter. Nobody had ever heard of Portola until then, but now we have dragged him out of oblivion and made quite a boy of him, all as an excuse to have a good time."
"Then you don't celebrate New Year's out here?" I asked.
"Don't we though!" he exclaimed. "You ought to be here for our New Year's fête. It is one of the most spontaneous shows of the kind you'll see anywhere. It's not a tough orgy such as you have on Broadway every New Year's Eve, with a lot of drunks sitting around in restaurants under signs saying 'Champagne Only'—I've seen that. We just have a lot of real fun, mostly in the streets.
"One thing you can count on out here. We celebrate everything that can be celebrated, and the beauty of a lot of our good times is that they have a way of just breaking loose instead of being cooked-up in advance. It has often happened that on Christmas Eve some great singer or musician would appear in the streets and sing or play for the crowds. A hundred thousand people heard Tetrazzini when she did that four years ago. Bispham anda lot of other big singers have done the same thing, and three years ago, on Christmas Eve, Kubelik played for the crowds in the streets. Somehow I think that musicians and artists of all kinds have a warm feeling for San Francisco, and want to show us that they have."
There can be no doubt that that is true. Many artists have inhabited San Francisco, and the city has always been beloved by them; especially, it sometimes seems, by the writing group. Mark Twain records that on his arrival he "fell in love with the most cordial and sociable city in the Union," and countless other authors, from Stevenson down, have paid their tribute.
As might be expected of a country so palpitantly beautiful and alive, California has produced many artists in literature and the other branches, and has developed many others who, having had the misfortune to be born elsewhere, possessed, at least, the good judgment to move to California while still in the formative period.
Sitting around a table in a café, one night, with a painter, a novelist and a newspaper man, I set them all to making lists, from memory, of persons following the arts, who may be classified as Californians by birth or long residence.
The four most prominent painters listed were Arthur F. Mathews, Charles Rollo Peters, Charles J. Dickman and Francis McComas, all of them men standing very high in American art. Among sculptors were mentioned Robert Aitken, Arthur Putnam, Haig Patigian and Douglas Tilden. Of writers there is a deluge.Besides Mark Twain and Stevenson, the names of Bret Harte, Frank Norris, and Joaquin Miller are, of course, historic in connection with the State. Among living writers born in California were listed Gertrude Atherton, Jack London, Lloyd Osbourne, Austin Strong, Ernest Peixotto and Kathleen Norris; while among those born elsewhere who have migrated to California, were set down the names of Harry Leon Wilson, Stewart Edward White, James Hopper, Mary Austin, Grace MacGowan Cooke, Alice MacGowan, Rufus Steele and Bertha Runkle. Still another group of writers who do not now reside in California are, nevertheless, associated with the State because of having lived there in the past. Among these are Wallace and Will Irwin, Gelett Burgess, Eleanor Gates, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Edwin Markham, George Sterling, Richard Tully, Jack Hines and Arno Dosch.
At this juncture it occurs to me that, quite regardless of the truth, I had better say that I have not set down these names according to any theories of mine about the order of their importance, but that I have copied them off as they came to me on lists made by other persons, who shall be sheltered to the last by anonymity.
All the names so far mentioned were furnished by the painter and the novelist. The newspaper man kept me waiting a long time for his list. At last he gave it to me, and lo! Harrison Fisher's name led all the rest. Henry Raliegh and Rae Irvin, illustrators, were also listed, but the formidable California showing came with the category of cartoonists and "comic artists" employed on New York newspapers. Of these the following were set down as products of the Golden State: Bud Fisher, Igoe, and James Swinnerton of the "American"; Tom McNamara, Hal Cauffman, George Harriman, Hershfield, and T. A. Dorgan ("Tad") of the "Journal"; Goldberg of the "Evening Mail"; R. E. Edgren of the "World"; Robert Carter of the "Sun"; and Ripley of the "Globe." The late Homer Davenport of the "American" also came to New York from San Francisco. This list, covering as it does all but a handful of the cartoonists and "funny men" of the New York papers, seems to me hardly less remarkable than this further list of "artists" of another variety who trace back to California: James J. Corbett, Jim Jeffries, Joe Choynski, Jimmy Britt, Abe Attell, Willie Ritchie, Eddie Hanlon and Frankie Neil; with Jack Johnson and Stanley Ketchell added for the reason that, although not actual native products, they "developed" in California.
Perhaps after having given California her artistic due in this handsome manner, and being, myself, well out of the State, this may be the best time to touch upon a sensitive point. As the reader may have observed, I always try to evade responsibility when playing with fire, and if one does that with fire, it becomes all the more necessary to observe the same rule in the case of earthquakes.
In this instance the best way out of it for me seems to be to put the blame on Baedeker, who, in his little red book, declares that "earthquakes occur occasionally inSan Francisco, but have seldom been destructive," after which he recites that in 1906 "a severe earthquake lasting about a minute" visited the city, that "the City Hall became a mass of ruins but, on the whole, few of the more solid structures were seriously injured."
San Francisco is notoriously sensitive upon this subject, and her sensitiveness is not difficult to understand. For one thing, earthquakes, interesting though they may be as demonstrations of the power of Nature, are not generally considered a profitable form of advertising for a city, although, curiously enough, they seem, like volcanic eruptions, to visit spots of the greatest natural beauty. For another thing San Francisco feels that "earthquake" is really a misnomer for her disaster, and that this fact is not generally understood in such remote and ill-informed localities as, for instance, the Island of Manhattan.
There is not a little justice in this contention. However the city may have been "shaken down" in the past, by corrupt politicians, the quake did no such thing. All the damage done by the actual trembling of the ground might have been repaired at a cost of a few millions, had not the quake started the fire and at the same time destroyed the means of fighting it. Baedeker, always conservative, estimates the fire loss at three hundred and fifty millions.
Furthermore, it is contended in San Francisco that the city is not actually in the earthquake belt. Scientists have examined the earthquake's fault-line, and have declared that it comes down the coast to a point some miles north of the city, where it obligingly heads out to sea, passing around San Francisco, and coming ashore again far to the south.
While, to my mind, this seems to indicate an extraordinary degree of good-nature on the part of an earthquake, I have come, through a negative course of reasoning, to accept it as true. For it so happens that I have discussed literature with a considerable number of scientific men, and I cannot but conclude from the experience that they must know an enormous amount about other matters. Therefore, on earthquakes, I am bound entirely by their decisions, and I believe that all well-ordered earthquakes will be so bound, and that the only chance of future trouble from this source, in San Francisco, might arise through a visit from some irresponsible, renegade quake which was not a member of the regular organization.
As to San Francisco's "touchiness" upon the subject there is this much more to be said. A cow is rumored to have kicked over a lamp and started the Chicago Fire. An earthquake kicked over a building and started the San Francisco Fire. People do not refer to the Chicago Fire as the "Cow." Why then should they refer to the San Francisco Fire as the "Earthquake"? That is the way they reason at the Golden Gate. But however that may be, the important fact is this: the Chicago Fire taught that city a lesson. When Chicago was rebuilt in brick and stone, instead of wood, another cow couldkick over another lamp without endangering the whole town. The same story is repeated in San Francisco. The city has been magnificently reconstructed. Another quake might kick over another building, but the city would not go as it did before, because, aside from the fact that the main part of it is now unburnable, as nearly as that may be said of any group of buildings, the most elaborate system of fire-protection has been installed, so that if, in future, water connections are broken at one point, or two points, or several points, there will still be plenty of water from other sources.
As an outsider, in love with San Francisco, who has yet had the temerity to mention the forbidden word, I may perhaps venture a little farther and suggest that it is time for sensitiveness over the word "earthquake" to cease.
Let us use what word we like: the fact remains that the disaster brought out magnificent qualities in San Francisco's people; they were victorious over it; they have fortified themselves against a repetition of it; they transformed catastrophe into opportunity. Already, I think, many San Franciscans understand that the cataclysm was not an unmixed evil, and I believe that, strange though it may seem, there will presently come a time when, for all their half-melancholy "before the fire" talk, they will admit that on the whole it was a good thing. For it is granted to but few cities and few men to really begin life anew.
San Fransiscans love to show their city off. Nevertheless they take a curious delight in countering against the enthusiasm of the alien with a solemn wag of the head and the invariable:
{seen }{felt }"Ah, but you should have {tasted } it before the Fire!"{smelled}{heard }
{seen }{felt }"Ah, but you should have {tasted } it before the Fire!"{smelled}{heard }
They say that about everything, old and new. They say it indiscriminately, without thought of what it means. They love the sound of it, and have made it a fixed habit. They say it about districts and buildings, about hotels, and the Barbary Coast (which is much like the old Bowery, in New York, and where ragtime dancing is said to have originated), and the Presidio (the military post, overlooking the sea), and Golden Gate Park (a semitropical wonder-place, built on what used to be sand dunes, and guarded by Park Policemen who carry lassos with which to stop runaways), and Chinatown, and the Fish Market (which resembles a collection of still-life studies by William M. Chase), and the Bank Exchange(which is not a commercial institution, but a venerable bar, presided over by Duncan Nicol, who came around the Horn with his eye-glasses over his ear, where he continues to wear them while mixing Pisco cocktails). They say it also of "Ernie" and his celebrated "Number Two" cocktail, with a hazelnut in it; and of the St. Francis Hotel (which is one of the best run and most perfectly cosmopolitan hotels in the country), and of the Fairmont Hotel (a wonderful pile, commanding the city and the bay as Bertolini's commands the city and the bay of Naples), and the Palace Hotel (where drinks are twenty-five cents each, as in the old days; where ripe olives are a specialty, and where, over the bar, hangs Maxfield Parrish's "Pied Piper," balancing the continent against his "Old King Cole," in the Knickerbocker bar, in New York). They say it about the Cliff House, (with its Sorrento setting, its seals barking on the rocks below, and its hectic turkey-trotting nights), about Tait's, and Solari's, and the Techau, and Frank's, and the Poodle Dog, and Marchand's, and Coppa's, and all the other restaurants; about the private dining-rooms (which are a San Francisco specialty), about the pretty girls (which are another specialty), about the clubs (which are still another), about cable-cars, taxicabs, flowers, shrimps, crabs, sand-dabs (which are fish almost as good as English sole), and about everything else. They use it instead of "if you please," "thank you," "good-morning," and "good-night." If there are no strangers to say it to they say it to one another. If youadmire a man's wife and children he will say it, and the same thing occurs if you approve of his new hat.
If the old San Francisco was indeed so far superior to the new, then Bagdad in the days of Haroun-al-Raschid would have been but a dull prairie town, compared with it.
But was it?
The San Francisco attitude upon this subject reminds me of that of the old French Royalists.
A friend of mine, an American living in Paris, happened to inquire of a venerable Marquis concerning thePalais de Glace, where Parisians go to skate.
"Ah, yes," replied the ancient aristocrat, raising his shoulders contemptuously, "one hears that the world now goes to skate under a roof, upon ice manufactured. Truly, all is changed, my friend. I assure you it was not like this under the Empire. In those times the lakes in the Bois used to freeze. But they do so no longer. It is not to be expected. Bah! ThissacréRepublic!"
While in San Francisco, I noted down a number of odd items, some of them unimportant, which, when added together, have much to do with the flavor of the town. Having used the word "flavor," I may as well begin with drinks.
Drinks cut an important figure in San Francisco life, as is natural in a wine-producing country. The merit of the best California wines is not appreciated in the East. Some of them are very good—much better, indeed, thana great deal of the imported wine brought from Europe. I have even tasted a California champagne which compares creditably with the ordinary run of French champagne, though when it comes to special vintages, California has not attained the French level.
It is a general custom, in public bars and clubs to shake dice for drinks, instead of clamoring to "treat," according to the silly eastern custom, which as every one knows, often causes men to drink more than they wish to, just to be "good fellows." The free lunch, in connection with bars, is developed more highly in San Francisco than in any other city that I know of; also, Easterners will be surprised to find small onions, or nuts, in their cocktails, instead of olives. A popular cocktail on the Coast is the "Honolulu," which is like the familiar "Bronx," excepting that pineapple juice is used in place of orange juice.
When my companion and I were in San Francisco a prohibition wave was threatening. Such a movement in a wine-producing country engenders very strong feeling, and I found, attached to the bills-of-fare in various restaurants, earnest pleas, addressed to voters, to turn out and cast their ballots against the temperance menace.
Of prohibition the town had already had a taste—if one may use the expression. The reform movement had struck the Barbary Coast, the rule, at the time of our visit, being that there should be no dancing where alcoholic drinks were served, and no drinks where there was dancing. This law was enforced and it made the formerregion of festivity a sad place. Even the sailors and marines sitting about the dance-halls, consuming beer-substitutes, at a dollar a bottle, were melancholy figures, appearing altogether unresponsive to the sirens who surrounded them.
Ordinary drinks at most bars in San Francisco are fifteen cents each, or two for a quarter, as in most other cities. That is to say, two drinks for "two bits."
Like the American mill, or the English Guinea, the "bit," familiar on the Pacific Slope, is not a coin. The Californian will ask for change for a "quarter," or a "half," as we do in the East, but in making small purchases he will ask for two, or four, or six "bits' worth," a "bit" representing twelve-and-a-half cents. In the old days there were also "short bits" and "long bits," meaning, respectively ten cents, and fifteen cents, but these terms with their implied scorn of the copper cent, have died out.
The humble penny is, however, still regarded contemptuously in San Francisco. Until quite recently all newspapers published there sold at five cents each, and that is still true of the morning papers, the "Chronicle" and the "Examiner." Lately the "Call" and the "Bulletin," evening papers, have dropped in price to one cent each, but when the princely Son of the Golden West buys them, he will frequently pay the newsboy with a nickel, ignoring the change. Nor is the newsboy to be outdone in magnificence: when a five-cent customer asks for one paper the boy will very likely hand him both. They understand each other, these two, and meet on terms of a noble mutual liberality.
As to Chinatown, those who knew it before the fire declare that its charm is gone, but my companion and I found interest in its shops, its printing offices and, most of all, in its telephone exchange.
The San Francisco Telephone Directory has a section devoted to Chinatown, in which the names of Chinese subscribers are printed in both English and Chinese characters. Thus, if I wish to telephone to Boo Gay, Are Too, Chew Chu & Co., Doo Kee, Fat Hoo, the Gee How Tong, Gum Hoo, Hang Far Low, Jew Bark, Joke Key, King Gum, Shee Duck Co., Tin Hop & Co., To To Bete Shy, Too Too Guey, Wee Chun, Wing On & Co., Yet Bun Hung, Yet Ho, Yet You, or Yue Hock, all of whom I find in the directory—if I wish to telephone to them, I can look them up in English and call "China 148," or whatever the number may be. But if a Chinaman who cannot read English wishes to call, he calls by name only, which makes it necessary for operators to remember not merely the name and number of each Chinese subscriber, but to speak English and Chinese—including the nine Chinese provincial dialects.
The operators are, of course, Chinese girls, and the exchange, which has over a thousand subscribers, representing about a tenth of the population of the Chinese district, is under the management of Mr. Loo Kum Shu, who was born in California and educated at the University of California. His assistant, Mr. Chin Sing,is also a native of the State, and is a graduate of the San Francisco public schools.
For a "soulless corporation" the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company has shown a good deal of imagination in constructing and equipping its Chinatown exchange. The building with its gaily decorated pagoda roof and balconies, makes a colorful spot in the center of Chinatown. Inside it is elaborately frescoed with dragons and other Chinese designs, while the woodwork is of ebony and gold. The switchboard is carved and is set in a shrine, and this fascinating incongruity, with the operators, all dressed in the richly colored silk costumes of their ancient civilization, poking in plugs, pulling them out, chattering now in English, now in Chinese, teaches one that anachronism may, under some conditions, be altogether charming.
One rumor concerning San Francisco restaurants appealed to my sinful literary imaginings. I had heard that these establishments resembled those of Paris, not only in cuisine, but because, as in Paris, the proprietors did not deem it necessary to stipulate that private dining-rooms should never be occupied save by parties of more than two.
Of one of these restaurants, in particular, I had been told the most amazing tales: A taxi would drive into the building by a sort of tunnel; great doors would close instantly behind it; it would run onto a large elevator andbe taken bodily to some floor above, where the occupants would alight practically at the door of their clandestine meeting-place—an exquisite little apartment, decorated like the boudoir of some royal favorite. If it were indeed true that such a picturesquely shocking place existed, I intended—entirely in the interest of my readers, you will understand—to see it; and honesty forces me to add that I hoped, with journalistic immorality, that it did exist.
One night I went there. True, the conditions were somewhat prosaic. It was quite late; my companion and I were tired, but we were near the end of our stay in San Francisco, and I insisted upon his accompanying me to the mysterious café, although he protested violently—not on moral grounds, but because he is sufficiently sophisticated to know that there is no subject upon which exaggeration gives itselfcarte blancheas it does when describing gilded vice.
The taxi did drive in through a kind of tunnel—a place suggesting coal wagons—but there were no massive, silent doors to close behind it. Passing into an inner court, which was like an empty garage, it stopped beside a little door.
"Where is the elevator?" I asked the taxi driver.
"In there," he answered, indicating the door.
"But," I complained, "I heard that there was a big elevator here, that took taxis right up stairs."
"There ain't," he said, succinctly.
Telling him to wait, we entered the door and came upon an elevator and a solitary waiter, whom we informed of our desire to see the place.
Obligingly he took us to an upper floor and opening the door of an apartment, showed us in.
"Of course," he said, "all of them are not so fine as this."
Alas for my imaginings, here was no rose-pink boudoir, no scene for a romantic meeting, but a room like one of those frightful parlor "sets" one sometimes sees in the cheapest moving pictures. However, in the movies one is spared the color of such a room; one may see that the wallpaper is of hideous design, but one cannot see its ghastly scrambled browns and greens and purples. As I glanced at the various furnishings it seemed to me that each was uglier than the last, and when finally my eye fell upon an automatic piano in a sort of combination of dark oak and art nouveau, with a stained glass front and a nickel in the slot attachment, my dream of a setting for sumptuous and esthetic sin was dead. It was a room in which adventure would taste like stale beer.
My companion placed a nickel in the slot that fed the terrible piano. There was a whirring sound, succeeded, not by low seductive strains, but by a sudden din of ragtime which crashed upon our ears as the decorations had upon our eyes.
Hastily I moved towards the door. My companion followed.
The switchboard of the Chinatown telephone exchange is set in a shrine and the operators are dressed in Chinese silksThe switchboard of the Chinatown telephone exchange is set in a shrine and the operators are dressed in Chinese silks
"If the gentlemans would wish to see some other apartments—?" suggested the obliging waiter, as we closed the door.
"Oh, no thanks," I said. "This gives us a good idea of it."
As we moved towards the elevator the waiter asked politely: "The gentlemans have never been in here before?"
"No," I said, "we don't live in San Francisco. We had heard about this place and wanted to see it before we went away."
"It is a famous place," he said. Then, with a shake of the head, he added, "But before the Fire——Ah, the gentlemans should have seen it then!"
The Panama Pacific Exposition will unquestionably be the most beautiful exposition ever held in the world. Its setting is both accessible and lovely, for it has the city upon one side and the bay and the Golden Gate upon the other.
Instead of being smooth and white like those of previous World's Fairs, the buildings have the streaked texture of travertine stone, with a general coloring somewhat warmer than that of travertine. Domes, doorways and other architectural details are rich in soft greens and blues, and the whole group of buildings, viewed from the hills behind, resembles more than anything else a great architectural drawing by Jules Guérin, made into a reality. And that, in effect, is what it is, for Guérin has ruled over everything that has to do with color, from the roads which will have a warm reddish tone, to the mural decorations and the lighting.
The exposition will hold certain records from the start. It will be the first great exposition ever held in a seaport. It will be, if I mistake not, the first to be ready on time. It will be the first held to celebrate a contemporaneous event, and its contemporaneousness will be reflected in its exhibitions, for, with the exception of a loan collection of art, nothing will be shown which has not been produced since the St. Louis Exposition of 1904. Also, I am informed, it is the first American exposition to have an appropriation for mural paintings. True, there were mural paintings at the Chicago World's Fair, but they were not provided for by appropriation, having been paid for by the late Frank Millet, with money saved from other things.
Of the painters who will have mural decorations at the Exposition, but one, Frank Brangwyn, is not an American. Also, but one is a Californian, that one being Arthur F. Mathews.
The only mural decorations in the Fine Arts Building will be eight enormous panels by Robert Reid, in the interior of the dome, eighty feet above the floor. Four of the panels symbolize Art; the others the "four golds of California": poppies, citrus fruits, metallic gold and golden wheat. Among the various excursions to the Exposition, I hope there will be one for old-school mural decorators—men who paint stiff central figures in brick-red robes, enthroned, and surrounded by cog-wheels, propellers, and bales of cotton, with the invariable male figures petrified at a forge upon one side, and the invariable inert mothers and children upon the other—I hope there will be an excursion to take such painters out and show them the brave swirl and sweep of line, the light, and the nacreous color which this artist has thrown into his decorations at the Fair.
Aside from the work of Mr. Reid, Edward Simmons has done two large frieze panels of great beauty, Frank Vincent Du Mond, two others, Childe Hassam, a lunette in most exquisite tones, and William de Leftwich Dodge, Milton H. Bancroft and Charles Holloway, other canvases, so that, the finished exposition will be fairly jeweled with mural paintings.
It is hard to write about expositions and mural paintings, without seeming to infringe upon the prerogatives of Baedeker, and it is particularly difficult to do so if one has happened to be shown about by a professional shower-about of the singularly voluble type we encountered at the Exposition.
To the reader who has followed my companion and me in our peregrinations, now drawing to a close, it will be unnecessary to say that by the time we reached the Pacific Coast, we believed we had encountered every kind of "booster" that creeps, crawls, walks, crows, cries, bellows, barks or brays.
But we had not. It remained for the San Francisco Exposition to show us a new specimen, the most amazing, the most appalling, the most unbelievable of all: the booster who talks like a book.
It was on the day before we left for home that we were delivered up to him. We had been keeping late hours, and were tired in a happy, drowsy sort of way, so that the prospect of being wafted through the morning sunshine to the exposition grounds, in an open automobile, and cruising about, among the buildings, without alighting, and without care or worry, was particularly pleasing to us.
The automobile came at the appointed hour, and with it the being who was to be our pilot. Full of confidence and trust, we got into the car, but we had not proceeded more than a few blocks, and heard our cicerone speak more than a few hundred thousand words, before our bosoms became filled with that "vague unrest" which, though you may never have experienced it yourself, you have certainly read about before.
I had not planned to have any vague unrest in this book, but it stole in upon me, unexpectedly, out there by the Golden Gate, just at the end of my journey, when I was off my guard, believing that the perils of the trip were past.
We had driven in that automobile but a few minutes, and had heard our guide speak not more than two hundred and fifty or three hundred thousand words, when my first vague feeling turned into a certainty that all was not for the best; and when I caught the eye of my companion and saw that its former drowsy look had given place to one of wild alarm, I knew that he shared my apprehension.
By the time we reached the fair grounds I had become so perturbed that I hardly knew where we were.
"Stop here," I heard our captor say to the chauffeur.
The car drew up between two glorious terracotta palaces. Directly ahead was the blue bay, and beyond it rose Mount Tamalpais in a gray-green haze. Our custodian arose from his seat, stepped to the front of the tonneau, and turning, fixed first one of us and then the other with a gaze that seemed to eat its way into our vitals. Through an awful moment of portentous silence we stared back at him like fascinated idiots. He raised one arm and swept it around the horizon. Then, of a sudden, he was off:
"Born a drowsy Spanish hamlet, fed on the intoxicants of man's lust for gold, developed by an adventurous and a baronial agriculture, isolated throughout its turbulent history from the home lands of its diverse peoples, and compelled to the outworking of its own ethical and social standards, the sovereign City of San Francisco has developed within her confines an individuality and a versatility, equaled by but few other cities, and surpassed by none."
At that point he took a breath, and a fresh start:
"It mellowed the sternness of the Puritan and disciplined the dashing Cavalier. It appropriated the unrivaled song and pristine art of the Latin. Every good thing the Anglo-Saxon, Celt, Gaul, Iberian, Teuton or almond-eyed son of Confucius had to offer, it seized upon and made part of its life."
Another breath, and it began again:
"Here is no thralldom of the past, but a trying of all things on their merits, and a searching of every proposal or established institution by the one test: Will it make life happier?"
As he went on I was becoming conscious of an overmastering desire to do something to stop him. I felt that I must interrupt to save my reason, so I pointed in the direction of Mount Tamalpais, and cried:
"What is that, over there?"
His eyes barely flickered towards the mountain, as he answered:
"That is Mount Tamalpais which may be reached by a journey of nineteen miles by ferry, electric train and steam railroad. This lofty height rears itself a clean half-mile above the sparkling waters of our unrivaled bay. The mountain itself is a domain of delight. From its summit the visitor may see what might be termed the ground plan of the greatest landlocked harbor on the Pacific Ocean, and of the region surrounding it—a region destined to play so large a part in the affairs of men."
"Good God!" I heard my companion ejaculate in an agonized whisper.
But if our tormentor overheard he paid not the least attention.
"We know," he continued in his sing-song tone, "that you will find here what you never found, and never can find, elsewhere. We shall try to augment your pleasure by indicating something of its origin in the city's romantic past. We shall give you your bearings in time and place. We shall endeavor to make smooth your path. We shall tell you what to seek and how to find it, and mayhap, what it means. We shall endeavor to endow you with the eyes to see, the ears to hear,and the heart to understand. In short, it is to help the visitor to comprehend, appreciate and enjoy 'the City Loved Around the World,' with its surpassingly beautiful environs, that this little handbook is issued."
"Thatwhat?" shrieked my companion.
The human guidebook calmly corrected himself.
"That I am here with you to-day," he said.
Through two interminable hours the thing went on and on like that. Several times, in the first hour, we tried to stop him by this means or that, but after awhile we learned that interruptions only opened other floodgates, and that it was best, upon the whole, to try to cultivate a state of inner numbness, and let his voice roll on.
Sometimes I fancied that I was becoming passive and resigned. Then suddenly a wave of hate would come boiling up inside me, and my fingers would itch to be at the man's throat: to strangle him, not rapidly, but slowly, so that he would suffer. I wanted to see his tongue hang out, his eyes bulge, and his face turn blue; to see him swell up, as he kept generating words, inside, until at last, being unable to emit them, he should burst, like an overcharged balloon.
Once or twice I was on the verge of leaping at him, but then I would think to myself: "No; I must not consider my own pleasure. If I kill him it will get into the New York papers, and my family and friends will not understand it, because they have not heard him talk."