Part 13

But to return to their artistic merits, they are artistic. Take those same “contented cows.” What could be more futurist than the coal black sky under which they so contentedly graze? Or the henna hills so far away, or the purple grass they chew. Matisse and Picasso, great modernists, could not out-do those cows.

The cigarette men are particularly interesting. A bit over done. One cannot help wonder what enthusiasm they would have left for a gorgeous sunset having spent so much on, a cigarette. But I expect they are good men at heart and not so sensuous as they appear. There’s that jolly old boy who hasn’t had such a good smoke in sixty years. One wonders if his teeth are his own. They all have teeth. Everyone has teeth these days. It would be a change to see someone on a billboard with his mouth shut.

Golden Gate Park

Enter slowly, by foot is much the better way, and join the long, loitering procession.

Black-green foliage, the curious old-green of trees that never wither and never resurrect. Something very foreign or is it San Francisco? Cubist effects of the horizontally-lined cypress, vertical lines of the eucalyptus, and the soft, down-dropping of the willow trees and pepper.

Women on the benches tatting, reading, resting. A retired Kansan widower passes, glances sidewise. Well, no harm in looking at a comely woman. Gossip of mothers over baby carriages, “Only nine months old! Mine is a year. Well, we think he’s pretty fine.”

Comes the sight-seeing bus. Blare of the megaphone. “Seventeen miles of driveway, boost, boast, greatest in the world.”

All day long the swings are swinging, rhythmic, slow to the touch of loving hands. Then at night when all is still and dark, they go on swinging dream children, rhythmic, slow.

Down the slide into the soft sand. Grandpa tending Nellie’s children: “Careful there.” Ding, ding like the sound of a temple bell the whirling, dizzy iron rings clang against their iron pole. Tramp of the patient little burros. “Mother, I want another cone.”

Bum-ti-bum, too-too-too, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-tahh, the band. Wagner by request. Music lovers in the crowd. A symphony orchestra is very fine, but simple people like ourselves, we also love a band.

I’ve never been to Japan, but this must be the way it looks. Tinkle of the wind bells, petals of Cherry floating down. Sorry, but I’ve used the last of the films. Well, we’ll come again.

The bears, the big brown grizzlies, leave them now. Out, what is this! Fairyland of flowers and fragrance. Bears and orchids, wise planned contrast.

People with accumulative minds wander through the museum, very interesting, “Just look at this mosaic, John.” Exhibit of modern art in the gallery. “Portrait of a girl,” only a daub to the wayfaring man.

Lovers in secluded places stealing a kiss, caught by the middle-aged. “Silly young things,” wistfully.

Once all parks were private grounds. Free now to the poorest serf. Well, there’s something century-gained. Some people say the world’s growing worse all the time. Perhaps, perhaps....

Who cares. Lying flat on your back close to the smell of the earth, the great kind mother. Up, up at the sky, how deep, how blue. Is there a God? There must be Something; look at each perfect blade of grass. An airplane across the blue. There’s something gained.

Automobiles in stately procession proud as horses ever were. Automobiles proudly rolling, swings swinging, people passing, and the swimming of all the water fowls, the swans, the Japanese ducks and the little mud hens. Infinitude of movement, infinitude of life, ineffable beauty. There must be a God. There must be Something back of it all.

Extra Fresh

Some one in San Francisco keeps hens. Not only hens, but a rooster. I distinctly heard him crow. It was in the very early morning, and like Tennyson’s “Queen of the May”--lying broad awake--“I did not hear the dog howl, mother, but I did hear this crow.”

It is Ralph Waldo Trine, I think, who says that “So long as there remaineth in it the crow of a cock or the lay of a hen a city is not a city.” But I would not base the citifiedness of a city upon the mere crow of a cock any more than on the census. It is a vulgar criterion.

For human nature is human nature and nothing betrays human nature like hens. It is not surprising, therefore, that some woman has sneaked into the city limits a mess of hens. Neither is it an aspersion on the police.

Besides this was to be about eggs.

Has anyone noticed how eggs of late years are never just eggs, but classified? The hens seem to lay them classified. There are hen eggs and pullet eggs and large hen eggs and small hen eggs and large pullet eggs and small pullet eggs and strictly fresh eggs and ranch eggs and choice eggs and large dark eggs and all-mixed eggs and fresh cracked eggs and mixed color eggs and small brown and, oh, hundreds of sub-divisions.

The very latest I noticed were “dirty” eggs, 2 cents cheaper. I look next for “small dirty eggs.” Why should they sound so unrefined? More so some way than “small dirty boys.” But an artist must paint life as he sees it and I saw these “dirty” eggs on that bazaar--and bizarre--of diversities--Fillmore street.

On Haight street I saw “extra fresh eggs” and how an egg can be more than “fresh” I fail to see. Now, a man may be “extra fresh,” but an egg is different. Even if it left the hen early it would still be only “fresh.” Well, the grocer probably knows.

Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take “ranch” eggs, how pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with “yard” eggs, such an “out in the open--let the rest of the world go by” impression they confer. And so reassuring, too, as though they couldn’t have been manufactured for Woolworth’s.

There is much, I find, to be written about eggs.

Isn’t it “up-looking,” as Mr. Wilson would say, that they are so cheap now?