Part 3

All this alien picturesqueness adds enormously of course to the San Franciscan's native picturesqueness. Not that the Californian needs adventitious aid in this matter. Indeed this cosmopolitanism of atmosphere serves best as a background, these alien types as a foil, for the native-born. For the Californians are a comely people. No traveler has failed--at least no man has failed--to pay tribute in passing to the Californian women. And they are beautiful. In that climate which produces bigness in everything, they grow to heroic size. And as a result of a life, inevitably open-air in an atmosphere always fog-touched, they have eyes of a notable limpidity and complexions of a striking vividness. To walk through that limited area which is the city's heart--especially when the theatres are letting out--is to come on beauty not in one pretty girl at a time, nor in pairs and trios, nor by scores and dozens; it is to see it in battalias and acres, and all of them meeting your eyes with the frank open gaze of the West. San Francisco is, I fancy, the only city on the globe where any musical comedy 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 Golden West--stalwart, stunning young giantesses marching with a splendid carriage 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 year you can count on unvarying sunny weather, the women dress on the streets with nothing short of gorgeousness. All the colors that the rainbow knows and a few that it has never seen, appear here. And worn with such chic, such verve! Not even in Paris, where may appear a more conventional smartness, is sartorial picturesqueness carried off with such an air of authority. Polaire, who was advertised as the ugliest woman in the world, should have made a fortune in California. For the Californian does not really know what female ugliness is. I have a theory that the California men cannot quite appreciate the beauty of their women. They take beauty for granted; they have never seen anything else. Nevertheless, that beauty and that dash constitute a menace. A city ordinance compels traffic policemen to wear smoked glasses, and car conductors and chauffeurs, blinders. Go West, young man!

But everybody celebrates the beauty of the Californian woman. Probably that is because heretofore "everybody" has been masculine. He has been so busy looking at the California woman that he hasn't realized yet that there'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. I have heard Californiacs say in their one moment of humility, "Why is it, when we turn out such magnificent women, that our men are so undersized?" Now I know nothing about average male heights and weights. I have never seen any comparative statistics. I can say only that the average Californian seems bigger than the average man. And often in walking through the San Francisco streets the eye, ranging along the crowd of pedestrians of average California stature, will strike on a man who bulks a whale, a leviathan, a dread-naught, beside the others, and rises a column, a monolith, a tower above them.

He is certainly upstanding, this average California male--running to bulk and a little to flesh. Often the line of feature is so regular that it suggests the Greek. He has eyes like mountain lakes and a smile like a 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 standardized American type, of which Abraham Lincoln of a past and the Wright brothers of a present generation are perfect specimens--the ugly-beautiful face, long and lean, with its harshly contoured strength of feature and its subtly softening melancholy of expression. The look of labor in California is not so much of strength as of force, an indomitable, unconquerable force. Melancholy is not there, but spirit; that fire and light which means hope. It is as though they were molded of iron--those faces--but illuminated from within. And with that strength goes the California comeliness.

Pulchritude begins in childhood with the Californian, grows and strengthens through youth to middle age. Even the old--but there are no old 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 let you.

All this picturesqueness, beauty and charm form the raw materials of the most entertaining city life in the country. For whatever San Francisco is 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 half a century ago and had never been taken off. The steam is pouring out of the nose. The cover is dancing up and down. The very kettle is rocking and jumping. But by some miracle the destructive explosion never happens. The Californian is easy-going in a sense and yet he works hard and plays hard. Athletics are feverish there, suffrage rampant, politics frenzied, labor militant. Would that I had space here to dilate on the athletic game as it is played in California--played with the charm and spirit and humor with which Californians play every game. Would that I had space to narrate, as Maud Younger tells it--the moving story of how the women won the vote in California. Would that I had space to describe the whirlwind political campaigns when there are at least four candidates in the field for every office, and when you are besought by postal, by letter, by dodgers, by advertisements in the papers and on the billboards to vote for all of them. Would that I had space--but here I must take the space--to tell how the Californian plays.

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

In the country, especially in the wine districts where the merrymaking sometimes lasts for days, these festivals are beautiful. In the city it depends largely, of course, on how much the commercial spirit enters into it; but whether they are beautiful or the reverse, they are always entertaining. Single streets, for instance, in San Francisco, are always having carnivals. The street elects a king and queen, plasters itself with bunting, arches itself with electric lights, lines its curbs with temporary booths, fills its corners with shows, sells confetti until the pedestrian swims in it--and then whoops it up for a week. All around, north, south, east, west, every other street is jet-black, sleeping decorously, ignoring utterly that blare of color, that blaze of light, that boom of noise around the corner. They should worry--they're going to have a carnival themselves next week. Apropos, a San Francisco paper opened its story of one of these affairs with the following sentence: "Last night (shall we call him Hans Schmidt?) was crowned with great pomp and ceremony king of the--Street Carnival, and fifteen minutes later, with no pomp and ceremony whatever, he was arrested for petty larceny." Billy Jordan was made King of the Fillmore Street Carnival. Now Billy Jordan, who was over eighty years of age, had served as announcer for every big boxing contest in San Francisco since--well, let's say, since San Francisco was born. He always ends his ring announcement with the words, "Let her go!" The reporters say that in the crown and sceptre, the velvet and ermine of a king, he opened the Fillmore Street Carnival with "Let her go!". And for myself, I choose to believe that story. The queen of this carnival--her first name was Manila, by the way--a pretty girl of course, was a picturesque detail in the city life for a week. In velvet, ermine and brilliant crown, she was always flashing from place to place in an automobile, surrounded by a group, equally pretty, of ladies in waiting. When the deep, cylindrical cistern-like reservoir on Twin Peaks was finished, they opened it with a dance; when the Stockton street tunnel was finished, they opened it with a dance; when the morgue was completed they opened that with a reception.

The San Francisco papers reflect all this activity, and they certainly make entertaining reading. For one thing, the annual crop of pretty girls being ten times as large there as anywhere else, and photography being universally a fine art, the papers are filled with pictures of beautiful women. They are the only papers I have ever seen in which the faces that appear on the theatrical page pale beside those that accompany the news stories. The last three months of my stay in San Francisco I cut out all the pictures of pretty girls from three newspapers. They included all kinds of women--society, club, athletic, college, highbrow, low-brow; highway-women, burglaresses, forgeresses and murderesses. I have just counted those pictures three hundred and fifty-four--and all beautiful. When I received my paper in the morning--until the war made that function, even in California, a melancholy one--I used to look first at the pictures of the women. Then always I turned to the sporting page to see what record had been broken since yesterday and, if it were Saturday morning (I confess it without shame), to read the joyous account of Friday night's boxing contest. And, always before I settled to the important news of the day, I read the last "stunt".

Picturesque "stunts" are always being pulled off in San Francisco. Was it the late lamented Beachey flying with a pretty girl around the half-completed Tower of Jewels, was it a pretty actress selling roses at the Lotta Fountain for the benefit of the Belgians, it was something amusing, stirring and characteristic. Always the "stunt" involved a lot of pretty girls and often it demanded the services of the mayor. I shall regret to the end of my days that I did not keep a scrapbook devoted to Mayor Rolph's activities. For being mayor of San Francisco is no sinecure. But as most of his public duties seemed to involve floods of pretty girls--well, if I were a man it would be my ambition to be mayor of San Francisco for the rest of my life.

The year I spent in California they were building the Exposition. They made of that task, as they make of every task, a game and a play and a lark--a joy and a delight--even though they were building under the most discouraging conditions that an exposition ever encountered. But nothing daunts the Californian, and so wood and iron, mortar and paint, grew steadily into the dream city that later fronted the bay.

As I think it over, I am very glad that I did not tell the Californiacs how beautiful Massachusetts is. Because it would only have bewildered them. I am glad that I did not mention to them that I shall always cherish a kind of feeling for Massachusetts that I can develop for no other spot. Because it would only have hurt them. You must not tell a Californiac that you love any place but California or that you have found beauty elsewhere. It's like breaking an engagement of marriage with a girl. It's like telling a child that there's no such person as Santa Claus. There's no tactful way of wording it. It simply can't be done. And I am very glad that I told the Californiacs all the time how much I love California, how much I love San Francisco. For beauty, California is like the fresh, glowing, golden crescent moon; it is waxing steadily to a noble fullness of development; and San Francisco is like the glittering evening-star; it fills the Pacific night with the happy radiance of its light and life. I think of California always--with its unabated fighting strength--as a champion among States. It takes the stranger--that champion State--under its mighty protection and gives him of its strength and happiness. It is more fun to be sick in California than to be well anywhere else. And I think of San Francisco always--the spirit of Tamalpais in the air--as an Amazon among cities. Its people love "the city" because, within the memory of man it was built, and within the memory of child, rebuilt. They themselves helped to build and rebuild it. They have worked and fought for it through every inch and instant of its history. It takes the stranger--that Amazon city--into its great, warm, beating mother-heart. If you are sick it makes you well. If you are sad it makes you glad. It infuses you with its working spirit. It inspires you with its fighting spirit. It asks you to work and fight with it. Massachusetts never permitted me to work or fight for it. Woman is as yet, in no real sense, a citizen there. And the result is that I love California as I love no other State, and San Francisco as I love no other city. I have no real criticism to bring against the Californiac. In fact, reader--ah, I see you've guessed it. I'm a Californiac myself.