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Title: The Native Son

Author: Inez Haynes Irwin

Release Date: July, 2002 [Etext #3312]

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The Native Son

By Inez Haynes Irwin

To Those Proud Native Sons

James W. Coffroth

Meyer Cohn

Porter Garnett

John Crowley

Willie Ritchie

J. Cal Ewing

James Wilson

Andrew J. Gallagher

And To Those Apologetic Adopted Sons

Albert M. Bender

Austin Lewis

Sam Berger

Xavier Martinez

Gelett Burgess

Perry Newberry

Michael Casey

Patrick O'Brien

Perry Newberry

Patrick Flynn

Fremont Older

Will Irwin

Lemuel Parton

Anton Johansen

Paul Scharrenberg

Waldemar Young

All of Whom Have Played

Some Graceful Part In Translating

California To Me

This Appreciation is Dedicated

The Native Son

The only drawback to writing about California is that scenery and

climate - and weather even - will creep in. Inevitably anything you

produce sounds like a cross between a railroad folder and a circus

program. You can't discuss the people without describing their

background; for they reflect it perfectly; or their climate, because it

has helped to make them the superb beings they are. A tendency manifests

itself in you to revel in superlatives and to wallow in italics. You

find yourself comparing adjectives that cannot be compared - unique for

instance. Unique is a persistent temptation. For, the rules of grammar

not-withstanding, California is really the most unique spot on the

earth's surface. As for adjectives like enormous, colossal, surpassing,

overpowering and nouns like marvel, wonder, grandeur, vastness, they are

as common in your copy as commas.

Another difficulty is that nobody outside California ever believes you.

I don't blame them. Once I didn't believe it myself. If there was

anything that formerly bored me to the marrow of my soul, it was talk

about California by a regular dyed-in-the-wool Californiac. But I got

mine ultimately. Even as I was irritated, I now irritate. Even as I was

bored, I now bore. Ever since I first saw California, and became,

inevitably, a Californiac, I have been talking about it, irritating and

boring uncounted thousands. I begin placatingly enough, "Yes, I know you

aren't going to believe this," I say. "Once I didn't believe it myself.

I realize that it all sounds impossible. But after you've once been

there - " Then I'm off. When I've finished, there isn't an hysterical

superlative adjective or a complimentary abstract noun unused in my

vocabulary. I've told all the East about California. I've told many of

the countries of Europe about California. I even tell Californians about

California. I will say to the credit of Californians though that they

listen. Listen! did I say listen? They drink it down like a child

absorbing its first fairy tale.

In another little volume devoted to the praise of California, Willie

Britt is on record as saying that he'd rather be a busted lamp-post on

Battery Street than the Waldorf-Astoria. I said once that I'd rather be

sick in California than well anywhere else. I'm prepared to go further.

I'd rather be in prison in California than free anywhere else. San

Quentin is without doubt the most delightfully situated prison in the

whole world. Besides I have a lot of friends - but I won't go into that

now. Anyway if I ever do get that severe jail-sentence which a

long-suffering family has always prophesied for me, I'm going to

petition for San Quentin. Moreover, I would rather talk about California

than any other spot on earth. I'd rather write about California than any

other spot on earth. Is it possible that any Californian Chamber of

Commerce has to pay a press agent? Incredible! Inexplicable! I wonder

that local millionaires don't bid their entire fortune for the

privilege. Now what has Willie Britt to say?

Yes, my idea of a pleasant occupation would be listing, cataloguing,

inventorying, describing and - oh joy! - visiting the wonders of

California. But that would be impossible for any one enthusiast to

accomplish in the mere three-score-and-ten of Scriptural allotment.

Methusalah might have attempted it. But in these short-lived days,

ridiculous to make a start. And so, perforce, I must share this joyous

task with other and more able chroniclers. I am willing to leave the

beauty of the scenery to Mary Austin, the wonder of the weather to Jesse

Williams, the frenzy of its politics to Sam Blythe, the beauty of its

women to Julian Street, the glory of the old San Francisco to Will

Irwin, the splendor of the new San Francisco to Rufas Steele, its

care-free atmosphere to Allan Dunn, if I may place my laurel wreath at

the foot of the Native Son. Indeed, when it comes to the Native Son, I

yield the privilege of praise to no one.

For the Native Son is an unique product, as distinctively and

characteristically Californian as the gigantic redwood, the flower

festival, the ferocious flea, the moving-picture film, the annual boxing

and tennis champion, the golden poppy or the purple prune. There is only

one other Californian product that can compare with him and that's the

Native Daughter. And as for the Native Daughter - - But if I start up

that squirrel track I'll never get back to the trail. Nevertheless some

day I'm going to pick out a diamond-pointed pen, dip it in wine and on

paper made from orange-tawny POPPY petals, try to do justice to the

Native Daughter. For this inflexible moment, however, my subject is the

Native Son. But if scenery and climate - and weather even - do creep in,

don't blame me. Remember I warned you. Besides sooner or later I shall

be sure to get back to the main theme.

In the January of 1917 I made my annual pilgrimage to California. On the

train was a Native Son who was the hero of the following astonishing

tale. He was one of a large family, of which the only girl had married a

German, a professor in an American university. Shortly before the Great

War, the German brother-in-law went back to the Fatherland to spend his

sabbatical year in study at a German university. Letters came regularly

for a while after the war began; then they stopped. His wife was very

much worried. Our hero decided in his simple western fashion to go to

Germany and find his brother-in-law. He traveled across the country,

cajoled the authorities in Washington into giving him a passport,

crossed the ocean, ran the British blockade and entered the forbidden

land. Straight as an arrow he went to the last address in his

brother-in-law's letters. That gentleman, coming home to his lunch,

tired, worried and almost penniless, found his Californian kinsman

smoking calmly in his room. The Native Son left money enough to pay for

the rest of the year of study and the journey home. Then he started on

the long trip back.

In the English port at which his ship touched, he was mistaken for a

disloyal newspaper man for whom the British Secret Service had long been

seeking. He was arrested, searched and submitted to a very disquieting

third degree. When they asked him in violent explosive tones what he

went into Germany for, he replied in his mild, unexcited Western voice -

to give his brother-in-law some money. All Europe is accustomed to crazy

Americans of course, but this strained credulity to the breaking point;

for nobody who has not tried to travel in the war countries can realize

the sheer unbelievability of such guilelessness. The British laughed

loud and long. His papers were taken away and sent to London but in a

few days everything was returned. A mistake had been made, the

authorities admitted, and proper apologies were tendered. But they

released him with looks and gestures in which an abashed bewilderment

struggled with a growing irritation.

That is a typical Native Son story.

If you are an Easterner and meet the Native Son first in New York (and

the only criticism to be brought against him is that he sometimes

chooses - think of that - chooses to live outside his native State!) you

wonder at the clear-eyed composure, the calm-visioned unexcitability

with which he views the metropolis. There is a story of a San Francisco

newspaper man who landed for the first time in New York early in the

morning. Before night he had explored the city, written a scathing

philippic on it and sold it to a leading newspaper. New York had not

daunted him. It had only annoyed him. He was quite impervious to its

hydra-headed appeal. But you don't get the answer to that imperviousness

until you visit the California which has produced the Native Son. Then

you understand.

Yes, Reader, your worst fears are justified; I'm going to talk about

scenery. But don't say that I didn't warn you! However, as it's got to

be done sometime, why not now? I'll be perfectly fair, though; so -

For the Native Son has come from a State whose back yard is two hundred

thousand square miles (more or less) of American continent and whose

front yard is five hundred thousand square miles (less or more) or

Pacific Ocean, whose back fence is ten thousand miles (or thereabouts)

of bristling snow-capped mountains and whose front hedge is ten thousand

miles (or approximately) of golden foam-topped combers; a State that

looks up one clear and unimpeded waterway to the evasive North Pole, and

down another clear and unimpeded waterway to the elusive South Pole and

across a third clear and unimpeded water way straight to the magical,

mystical, mysterious Orient. This sense of amplitude gives the Native

Son an air of superiority . . . Yes, you're quite right, it has a touch

of superciliousness - very difficult to understand and much more

difficult to endure when you haven't seen California; but completely

understandable and endurable when you have.

- Californiacs read every word, Easterners skip this paragraph -

Man helped nature to place Italy, Spain, Japan among the wonder regions

of the world; but nature placed California there without assistance from

anybody. I do not refer alone to the scenery of California which is

duplicated in no other spot of the sidereal system; nor to the climate

which matches it; nor to its super-mundane fertility, nor to its

super-solar fecundity. The railroad folder with its voluble vocabulary

has already beaten me to it. I do not refer solely to that rich

yellow-and-violet, springtime bourgeoning which turns California into

one huge Botticelli background of flower colors and sheens. I do not

refer to that heavy purple-and-gold, autumn fruitage, which changes it

to a theme for Titian and Veronese. I am thinking particularly of those

surprising phenomena left over from pre-historic eras; the "big" trees -

the sequoia gigantea, which really belong to the early fairy-tales of

H. G. Wells, and to those other trees, not so big but still giants - the

sequoia sempivirens or redwoods, which make of California forests

black-and-silver compositions of filmy fluttering light and solid bedded

shade. I am thinking also of that patch of pre-historic cypresses in

Monterey. These differ from the straight, symmetrical classic redwoods

as Rodin's "Thinker" differs from the Apollo. Monstrous, contorted

shapes - those Monterey cypresses look like creatures born underground,

who, at the price of almost unbearable torture, have torn through the

earth's crust, thrusting and twisting themselves airward. I refer even

to that astonishing detail in the general Californian sulphitism, the

seals which frequent beach rocks close to the shore, a short car ride

from the heart of a city as big as San Francisco.

- and this -

California, because of rich gold deposits, and a richer golden,

sunshine, its golden spring poppy and its golden summer verdure, seems

both literally and figuratively, a golden land golden and gay. It is a

land full of contradictions however. For those amazing memorials from a

prehistoric past give it in places a strange air of tragedy. I challenge

this grey old earth to produce a strip of country more beautiful, also

more poignant and catastrophic in natural connotation, than the one

which includes these cypresses of Monterey. Yet this same mordant area

holds Point Lobos, a headland which displays in moss and lichens all the

minute delicacy of a gleeful, elfin world. I challenge the earth to

produce a region more beautiful, yet also more gay and debonair in

natural connotation, than the one which enfolds San Francisco. For here

the water presents gorgeous, plastic color, alternating blue and gold.

Here Mount Tamalpais lifts its long straight slopes out of the sea and

thrusts them high in the sky. Here Marin County offers contours of

dimpled velvet bursting with a gay irridescence of wildflowers. Yet that

same gracious area frames the grim cliff-cup which holds San Francisco

bay - a spot of Dantesque sheerness and bareness.

- and this.

This is what nature has done. But man has added his deepening touch in

one direction and his enlivening touch in another. The early fathers -

Spanish - erected Missions from one end of the State to the other. These

are time-mellowed, mediaeval structures with bell-towers, cloisters and

gardens, sunbaked, shadow-colored; and in spots they make California as

old and sad as Spain. Later emigrants - French - have built in the

vicinity of San Francisco many tiny roadside inns where one can drink

the soft wines of the country. Framed in hills that are garlanded with

vineyards, these inns are often mere rose-hidden bowers. They make

California seem as gay as France. I can best put it by saying that I

know of no place so "haunted" in every poetic and plaintive sense as

California; yet I know of no place so perfectly suited to carnival and

festival.

All of this is part of the reason why you can't surprise a Californian.

This looks like respite, but there's no real relief in sight Easterners.

Keep right on reading, Californiacs!

Yes, California is beautiful.

Once upon a time, a Native Son lay dying. He did not know that he was

going to die. His physician had to break the news to him. He told the

Californian that the process would not be long or painful. He would go

to sleep presently and when he woke up, the great journey would have

been accomplished. His words fulfilled themselves. Soon the Native Son

fell into a coma. When he opened his eyes he was in Paradise. He raised

himself up, gave one look about and exclaimed, "What a boob that doctor

was! Whad'da he mean - Paradise! Here I am still in California."

Man has of course, here as elsewhere, chained nature; set her to toil

for him. She is a willing worker everywhere, but in California she puts

no stay nor stint on her productive efforts. California produces - Now

up to this moment I have held myself in. Looking back on my copy I see

only such meager words as "beauty", "glory", "splendor", such pale,

inadequate phrases as "super-mundane fertility" and "super-solar

fecundity". What use are words and phrases when one speaks of

California. It is time for us to abandon them both and resort to some

bright, snappy sparkling statistics.

Reader, I had to soft-pedal here. If I gave you the correct statistics,

You wouldn't believe me.

So here goes!

California produces forty per cent of the gold, fifty per cent of the

wheat, sixty per cent of the oranges, seventy per cent of the prunes,

eighty per cent of the asparagus and (including the Native Daughters)

ninety-nine and ninety-nine one-hundredths per cent of the peaches of

the world. I pause to say here that none of these figures is true. They

are all made up for the occasion. But don't despair! I am sure that they

don't do California justice by half. Any other Californiac - with the

mathematical memory which I unfortunately lack - will provide the

correct data. Somebody told me once, I seem to recall, that the Santa

Clara valley produces sixty per cent of the worlds prunes. But I may be

mistaken. What I prefer to remember is one day's trip in that springtide

of prune bloom. For hours and hours of motor speed, we glided through a

snowy world that showed no speck of black bark or fleck of green leaf; a

world in which the sole relief from a silent white blizzard of blossom

was the blue of the sky arch, the purple of distant lupines alternating

with the gold of blood-centered poppies, pouring like avalanches down

hills of emerald green.

Getting out of the scenery zone only to fall into the climate zone.

Reader, it's just the same with the climate as the scenery. It's got to

be done some time, so why not now?

That's what California produces in the way of scenery and fodder. So

now, let's consider the climate, even if I am invading Jesse Williams's

territory. For it has magical properties - that climate of California.

It makes people grow big and beautiful and strenuous; it makes flowers

grow big and beautiful; it makes fleas grow big and - strenuous. It

offers, except in the most southern or the most mountainous regions, no

such extremes of heat or cold as are found elsewhere in the country. Its

marvel is of course the season which corresponds to our winter. The

visitor coming, let us say in February, from the ice-bound and

frost-locked East through the flat, dreary Middle West, and stalled

possibly on the way, remains glued in stupefaction to the car window. In

a very few hours he slides from the white, glittering snow-covered

heights of the evergreen-packed Sierras through their purple, hazy,

snow-filled depths into the sudden warmth of California.

It is like waking suddenly from a nightmare of winter to a poets or a

painter's vision of spring.

Who, having seen this picture in January, could resist describing it?

Easterners, I appeal to your sense of justice.

At one side, perhaps close to the train, near hills, on which the live

oaks spread big, ebon-emerald umbrellas, serpentine endlessly into the

distance. On the other side, far hills, bathed in an amethystine mist,

invade the horizon. Between stretches the flat green field of the

valley, gashed with tawny streaks that are roads and dotted with soft,

silvery bunches that are frisking new-born lambs. Little white houses,

with a coquettish air of perpetual summer, flaunt long windows and

wooden-lace balconies, Early roses flask pink flames here and there. The

green-black meshes of the eucalyptus hedges film the distance. The

madrone, richly leaved like the laurel, reflects the sunlight from a

bole glistening as though freshly carved from wet gold.

Cheer up! We're getting out of scenery and climate into

The race - a blend of many rich bloods - that California has evolved

with the help of this scenery and climate is a rare brew. The physical

background is Anglo-Saxon of course; and it still breaks through in the

prevailing Anglo-Saxon type. To this, the Celt has brought his poetry

and mysticism. To it, the Latin has contributed his art instinct; and

not art instinct alone but in an infinity of combinations, the dignity

of the Spaniard, the spirit of the French, the passion of the Italian.

- into -

All the foregoing is put in, not to make it harder, but because - as a

Californiac - I couldn't help it, and to show you what, in the way of a

State, the Native Son is accustomed to. You will have to admit that it

is some State. The emblem on the California flag is singularly apposite

- it's a bear.

- oh boy! - San Francisco!

And if, in addition to being a Californian, this Native Son visiting the

East for the first time, is also a San Franciscan, he has come from a

city which is, with the exception of peacetime Paris, the gayest and

with the exception of none, the happiest city in the world; a city of

extraordinary picturesqueness of situation and an equally notable

cosmopolitanism of atmosphere; a city which is, above all cities, a

paradise for men.

San Francisco, which invents much American slang, must have provided

that phrase - "this man's town." For that is what San Francisco is - a

mans town.

I dare not appeal to Easterners; but Californiacs, I ask you how could I

forbear to say something about "the city"?

San Francisco, or "the city"', as Californians so proudly and lovingly

term her, is peculiarly fortunate in her situation and her weather.

Riding a series of hills as lightly as a ship the waves, she makes real

exercise of any walking within her limits. Moreover the streets are tied

so intimately and inextricably to seashore and country that San

Francisco's life is, in one sense, less like city life than that of any

other city in the United States. Yet by the curious paradox of her

climate, which compels much indoor night entertainment, reinforced by

that cosmopolitanism of atmosphere, life there is city life raised to

the highest limit. Last of all, its size - and personally I think there

should be a federal law forbidding cities to grow any bigger than San

Francisco - makes it an engaging combination of provincialism and

cosmopolitanism.

Not scenery this time, Reader, nor climate, but weather. Like scenery

and climate, it must be done. Hurdle this paragraph, Easterners! Keep on

reading, Californiacs!

The "city" does its best to put the San Franciscan in good condition.

And the weather reinforces this effort by keeping him out of doors.

Because of a happy collaboration of land with sea, the region about San

Francisco, the "bay" region - individual in this as in everything else -

has a climate of its own. It is, notwithstanding its brief rainy season,

a singularly pleasant climate. It cannot be described as "temperate" in

the sense, for instance, that New England's climate is temperate. That

is too harsh. Neither can it be described as "semi-tropical" in the way

that Hawaii, for example, is semi-tropical. That is too soft. It combines

the advantages of both with the disabilities of neither.

You may begin to read again, Easterners; for at last I've returned to

the Native Son.

That sparkling briskness - the tang - which is the best the temperate

climate has to offer, gives the Native Son his high powered strenuosity.

That developing softness - lush - (every Native Son will admit the lush)

which is the best the semi-tropical element has to contribute, gives him

his size and comeliness. The weather of San Francisco keeps the Native

Son out of doors whenever it is possible through the day time. To take

care of this flight into the open are seashore and mountain, city parks

and country roads. That same weather drives him indoors during the

evenings. And to meet this demand are hotels, restaurants, theatres,

moving-picture houses, in numbers out of all proportion to the

population. Again, the weather permits him to play baseball and football

for unusual periods with ease, to play tennis and golf three-quarters of

the year with comfort, to walk and swim all the year with joy.

Notwithstanding the combination of heavy rains with startling hill

heights, he never ceases to motor day or night, winter or summer. The

weather not only allows this, but the climate drives him to it.

These are the reasons why there is nothing hectic about the hordes of

Native Sons who nightly motor about San Francisco, who fill its theatres

and restaurants. An after-theatre group in San Francisco is as different

from the tallowy, gas-bred, after-theatre groups on Broadway as it is

possible to imagine. In San Francisco, many of them look as though they

had just come from State-long motor trips; from camping expeditions on

the beach, among the redwoods, or in the desert; from long, cold Arctic

cruises, or long, hot Pacific ones. Moreover the Native Son's club

encourages all this athletic instinct by offering spacious and beautiful

gymnasium quarters in which to develop it. Lacking a club, he can turn

to the public baths, surely the biggest and most beautiful in the world.

Just as there is a different physical aspect to the Native Son, there

is, compared to the rest of the country, a different social aspect to

him. California is still young, still pioneer in outlook. Society has

not yet shaken down into those tightly stratified layers, typical of the

East. There is a real spirit of democracy in the air.

The first time I visited San Francisco I was impressed with the remarks

of a Native son of moderate salary who had traveled much in the East.

"This here and now San Francisco is a real man's town", he said. "I

don't know so much about the women, but the men certainly can have a

better time here than in any other city in the country. And then again,

a poor man can live in a way and do things in a style that would be

impossible in New York. At my club I meet all kinds of men. Many of them

are prominent citizens and many of them have large fortunes. I mix with

them all. I don't mean to say I run constantly with the prom. cits. and

the millionaires. I don't. I cant afford that. But they occasionally

entertain me. And I as often entertain them. So many restaurants here

are both inexpensive and good that I can return their hospitality

self-respectingly and without undue expense. In New York I would not

only never meet that type of man, but I could not afford to entertain

him if I did."

Allied to this, perhaps, is a quality, typical of San Francisco, which I

can describe only as promiscuity. That promiscuity is in its best phase

a frankness; a fearlessness; a gorgeous candor which made possible the

epigram that San Francisco has every vice but hypocrisy. Civically, two

cross currents cut through the city's life; one of, a high visioned

enlightenment which astounds the visiting stranger by its force, its

white-fire enthusiasm; the other a black sordidness and soddenness which

displays but one redeeming quality - the characteristic San Franciscan

candor. That openness is physical as well as spiritual. The city,

dropped over its many hills like a great loose cobweb weighted thickly

with the pearl cubes of buildings, with its wide streets; its frequent

parks; its broad-spaced residential areas; its gardened houses in which

high windows crystallize every view and sun parlors or sleeping porches

catch both the first and last hint of daylight - the city itself has the

effect of living in the open. Everybody is frankly interested in

everybody else and in what is going on. Of all the cities the country,

San Francisco is by weather and temperament, most adapted to the

pleasant French habit of open-air eating. The clients in the barber

shops, lathered like clowns and trussed up in what is perhaps the least

heroic posture and costume possible for man, are seated at the windows,

where they may enjoy the outside procession during the boresome

processes of the shave and the hair-cut. In the windows of the downtown

shops, with no pretence whatever of the curtains customary in the East,

men clerks disrobe and re-robe life-sized female models of an appalling

nude flesh-likeness. They dress these helpless ladies in all the

fripperies of femininity from the wax out, oblivious to the flippant

comments of gathering crowds. It's all a part of that civic candor

somehow. Nowhere I think are eyes so clear, glances so direct and

expressions so frank as in California. Nowhere is conversation and

discussion more straightforward and courageous.

All that I have written thus far is only by way of preliminary to

showing you what the background of the Native Son has been and to

explaining why Europe does not dazzle him much and the East not at all.

Remember that he is instinctively an athlete and that he has never

dissipated his magnificent strength in fighting weather. If he is a

little - mind you, I say only a little - inclined to use that strength

on more entertaining dissipation, he is as likely to restore the balance

by much physical exercise.

There I go again! Enormous! Superb! Splendid! Spacious! You see how

impossible it is to keep your vocabulary down when California is your

subject. Another moment and I shall be saying more unique.

Remember that all his life he has gazed on beauty - beauty tragic and

haunting, beauty gorgeous and gay. Remember he is accustomed to enormous

sizes; superb heights; splendid distances; spacious vistas. That

California does not produce an annual crop of megalo-maniacs is the best

argument I know for the superiority of heredity over environment.

Remember, too, that all his life the Native Son has soaked in an art

atmosphere potentially as strong and individual as ancient Greece or

renaisance Italy. The dazzling country side, the sulphitic brew of

races, the cosmopolitan "city" have taken care of that. That art-spirit

accounts for such minor California phenomena as photography raised to

unequalled art levels and shops whose simple beautiful interiors

resemble the private galleries of art collectors; it accounts for such

major phenomena as the Stevenson monument, the "Lark", the annual Grove

Play of the Bohemian Club, and the Exposition of 1915.

The tiny monument to Stevenson, tucked away in a corner soaked with

romantic memories - Portsmouth Square - compares favorably with the

charming memorials to the French dead. It is a thing of beautiful

proportions. A little stone column supports a bronze ship, its sails

bellying robustly to the whip of the Pacific winds. The inscription - a

well known quotation from the author - is topped simply by "To remember

Robert Louis Stevenson."

Perhaps you will object that some of these are not Native Sons. But

hush! Californians consider anybody who has stayed five minutes in the

State - a real Californian. And believe us, Reader, by that time most of

them have become not Californians but Californiacs.

The "Lark" is perhaps the most delicious bit of literary fooling that

this country has ever produced. It raised its blythe song at the Golden

Gate, but it was heard across a whole continent. For two years, Gelett

Burgess, Bruce Porter, Porter Garnett, Willis Polk, Ernest Peixotto, and

Florence Lundborg performed in it all the artistic antics that their

youth, their originality, their high spirits suggested. Professor

Norton, speaking to a class at Harvard University, and that the two

literary events of the decade between 1890 and 1900 were the fiction of

the young Kipling and the verse that appeared in the " Lark."

The Grove-Play is an annual incident of which I fancy only California

could be capable. Of course the calculable quality of the weather helps

in this possibility. But the art-spirit, born and bred in the

Californian, is the driving force. Every year the Bohemian Club produces

in its summer annex - a beautiful grove of redwoods beside the Russian

river - a play in praise of the forest. The stage is a natural one, a

cleared hill slope with redwoods for wings. The play is written, staged,

produced and acted by members of the club. The incidental music is also

written by them. Scarcely has one year's play been produced before the

rehearsals for the next begin. The result is a performance of a finished

beauty which not only astounds Easterners, but surprises Europeans.

Although undoubtedly it is the best, it is only one of numberless

out-of-door masques, plays and pageants produced all over California.

As for the Exposition of 1915, when I say that for many Californians, it

will take the edge off some of the beauty of Europe, I am quite serious.

For it was colored in the gorgeous gamut of the Orient, clamant yellows,

oranges, golds, combined with mysterious blues, muted scarlets. And it

was illuminated as no Exposition has ever before been illuminated; with

lights that dripped down from the cornices of the buildings; or shot up

from their foundations; or gleamed through transparent pillars; or

glistened behind tumbling waters; or sparkled within leaping fountains.

Some of this light even floated from enormous braziers, thereby filling

the night with clouds of mist-flame; or flooded across the bay from

reservoirs of tinted glass, thereby sluicing the whole dream-world with

fluid color. All this was reflected in still lakes and quiet pools. The

procession of one year's seasons gradually subdued its gorgeousness to

an effect of antiquity, toned but still colorful. The quick-growing

California vines covered it with an age-old luxuriance of green. As for

the architecture - I repeat that the Californian, seeing for the first

time the square of St. Peter's in Rome and of St. Mark's in Venice, is

likely to suffer a transitory but definite sense of disappointment. For

the big central court of the Exposition held suggestions of both these

squares. It seemed quite as old and permanent. And it was much more

striking in situation, with the bay offering an immense, flat blue

extension at one side and the city hills, pricked with lights, slanting

up and away from the other. By day, the joyous, whimsical fantasy of the

colossal Tower of Jewels, which caught the light in millions of rainbow

sparkles, must, for children at least, have made of its entrance the

door to fairyland. At night, there was the tragedy of old history about

those faintly fiery facades . . . those enormous shadow-haunted hulks .

. .

Remember, last of all, as naturally as from infancy the Native Son has

breathed the tonic and toxic air of California, he has breathed the

spirit of democracy. That spirit of democracy is so strong, indeed, that

the enfranchised women of California give intelligent guidance to the

feminists of a whole nation; public opinion is so enlightened that it

sets a pace for the rest of the country and labor is so progressive that

it is a revelation to the visiting sociologist.

Indeed, nowhere in the whole world, I fancy, is labor so healthy, so

happy, so prosperous. California brings to the workers' problems the

free enlightened attitude characteristic of her. As between on the one

hand hordes of unemployed; huge slums; poverty spots; and on the other a

well-paid laboring class with fair hours, she chooses the latter,

thereby storing up for herself eugenic capital.

I have always wished that California would strike off a series of medals

symbolic of some of the Utopian conditions which prevail there. I would

like to suggest a model for one. I was walking once in the vicinity of

the Ferry with a woman who knows the labor movement of California as

well as an outsider may. Suddenly she whispered in my ear, " Oh look!

Isn't he a typical California labor man?"

It was his noon hour and, in his shirt sleeves, he was leaning against

the wall, a pipe in his mouth. He was tall and lean; not an ounce of

superfluous flesh on his splendid frame, but a great deal of muscle that

lay in long, faintly swelling contours against it. He was black haired

and black-mustached; both hair and mustache were lightly touched with

grey. His thicklashed blue eyes sparkled as clear and happy as a

child's. In their expression and, indeed, in the whole relaxed attitude

of his fine, long figure, was an entertained, contented interest, an

amused tolerance of the passing crowd. You will see this type, among

others equally fine, again and again, in the unions of California.

Yes, that spirit of democracy is not only strong but militant.

Militant! I never could make up my mind which made the fightingest

reading in the San Francisco papers, the account of Friday's boxing

contest or of Monday's meeting of the Board of Supervisors. They do say

that a visiting Easterner was taken to the Board of Supervisors one

afternoon. In the evening he was regaled with a battle royal. And, and -

they do say - he fell asleep at the battle royal because it seemed so

tame in comparison with the Board of Supervisors.

The athletic instinct in the Native Son accounts for the star athletes,

boxers, tennis players, ball players; that art instinct for the

painters, illustrators, sculptors, playwrights, fiction writers, poets,

actors, photographers, producers; that spirit of democracy for the labor

leaders and politicians with whom California has inundated the rest of

the country.

I started to make a list of the famous Californians in all these

classes. But, when I had filled one sheet with names, realizing that no

matter how hard I cudgelled my memory, I would inevitably forget

somebody of importance, I tore it. up. Take a copy of "Who's Who" and

cut out the lives of all those who don't come from California and see

what a respectable-sized volume you have left.

If any woman tourist should ask me what was the greatest menace to the

peace of mind of a woman travelling alone in California, I should answer

instantly - the Native Son. I wish I could draw a picture of him.

Perhaps he's too good looking. Myself, I think the enfranchised women of

California should bring injunctions - or whatever is the proper legal

weapon - against so dangerous a degree of male pulchritude. Of course

the Native Son could reply that, in this respect, he has nothing on the

Native Daughter, she being without doubt the most beautiful woman in the

world. To, this, however, she could retort that that is as it should be,

but it's no fair for mere men to be stealing her stuff.

This is misleading!

That agglomeration of the Anglo-Saxon, the Celt and the Latin, has

endowed the Native Son with the pulchritude of all three races. In

eugenic combination with Ireland, California is peculiarly happy. The

climate has made him tall and big. His athletic habits has made him

shapely and strong. Both have given him clear eyes, a smooth skin, swift

grace of motion. Those clear eyes invest him with alook of innocence and

unsophistication. He is as rich in dimples as though they had been

shaken onto him from a salt-cellar. One in each cheek, one in his chin -

count them - three! The Native Daughter would have a license to complain

of this if she herself didn't look as thou she'd been sprinkled with

dimples from a pepper-caster. In addition - oh, but what's the use? Who

ever managed to paint the lily with complimentary words or gild refined

gold with fancy phrases? The region bounded by Post, Bush, Mason and

Taylor Streets contains San Francisco's most famous clubs. Any Congress

of Eugenists wishing to establish a standard of male beauty for the

human race has only to place a moving-picture machine at the entrance of

any one of these - let us say the Athletic Club. The results will at the

same time enrapture and discourage a dazzled world. I will prophesy that

some time those same enfranchised women of California are going to

realize the danger of such a sight bursting unexpectedly on the

unprepared woman tenderfoot. Then they'll rope off that dangerous area,

establish guards at the corners and put up "Stop! Look! Listen!" signs

where they'll do the most good. And as proof of all these statements, I

refer you to that array of young gods, filing endlessly over the

sporting pages of the California newspapers.

And I'll pay for the privilege. What the Chamber of Commerce ought to

do, though, is to advertise that this concession will be put up at

auction. Indeed, if this sale were made an annual event, women bidders

would flock to California from all over the world.

A Native Son told me once that he had been given the star-assignment of

newspaper history. Somebody offered a prize to the most beautiful

daughter of California. And his job was to travel all over the State to

inspect the candidates. He said it was a shame to take his pay and I

agreed that it was sheer burglary. All I've got to say is that if

anybody wants to offer a prize for the handsomest Native Son in

California, I'll give my services as judge. I will add that after nearly

two years of war-time Europe, in which I have had an opportunity to

study some of the best military material of England, France, Italy,

Portugal, Spain and Switzerland - the Native Son leads them all. I am

inclined to think he is the best physical specimen in the world.

But there is a great deal more to the Native Son than mere comeliness.

That long list of nationally-famous Californians proves this in one way,

the high average of his citizenship in another. Physically he is a big,

strong, high-geared, high-powered racing machine; and he has an

inexhaustible supply of energy for motive fluid and an extraordinary

degree of initiative and enterprise for driving forces. That initiative

and enterprise spring part from his inalienable pep, his vivid interest

in life; and part from that constructive looseness of the social

structure, which gives them both full play. If the Native Son sees

anything he wants to do, he instantly does it. If he sees anything that

he wants to get, he promptly takes it. If he sees anything that he wants

to be, he immediately is it. He saunters into New York in a degage way

and takes the whole city by storm. He strolls through Europe with an

insouciant air and finds it almost as good as California. All this,

supplemented by his abiding conviction that California must have the

most and best and biggest of everything, accounts for what California

has done in the sixty-odd years of her existence, accounts for what San

Francisco has done in the decade since her great disaster, accounts for

that wartime Exposition; perhaps the most elaborate, certainly the most

beautiful the world has ever seen.

The Native Son has a strong sense of humor and he invents his own

slang. He expresses himself with the picturesqueness of diction

inevitable to the West and with much of its sly, dry humor. But there is

a joyous quality to the San Francisco blague which sets it apart, even

in the West. You find its counterpart only in Paris. Perhaps it is that,

being reenforced by wit, it explodes more quickly than the humor of the

rest of the country. The Californian with his bulk, his beauty, his

boast and his blague descending on New York is very like the native of

the Midi who with similar qualities, is always taking Paris by storm.

Marseilles, the chief metropolis of the Midi, has a famous promenade -

less than half a dozen blocks, packed tight with the peoples and colors

and odors of two continents - called the Cannebiere. The Marseillais,

returning from his first visit to Paris, remarks with condescending

scorn that Paris has no Cannebiere. Of course Paris has her network of

Grand Boulevards but - So the Californiac patronizingly discovers that

New York has no Market Street, no Golden Gate Park, no Twin Peaks, no

Mt. Tamalpais, no seals. Above all - and this is the final thrust - New

York is flat.

Somebody ought to invent a serum that renders the victim immune.

Some day medical journals will give the same space to the victims of

California hospitality that they now allot to victims of Oriental

famines. For with Californians, hospitality is first an instinct, then

an art, then a religion and finally a mania. It is utterly impossible to

resist it, but it takes a strong constitution to survive. Californians

will go to any length or trouble in this matter; their hospitality is

all mixed up with their art instinct and their sense of humor. For no

matter what graceful tribute they pay to famous visiting aliens, its

formality is always leavened by their delicious wit. And no matter how

much fun they poke at departing or returning friends, it is always

accompanied by some social tribute of great charm and originality.

A loyal Adopted Son of California, a novelist and muckraker, returned a

few years ago to the beloved land of his adoption. His arrival was made

the occasion of a dinner by his Club. He had come back specifically on a

muckraking tour. But it happened that during his absence he had written

a series of fiction stories, all revolving about the figure of a

middle-aged woman medium. In the midst of the dinner, a fellow clubman

disguised as a middle-aged woman medium began to read the future of the

guests. She discoursed long and accurately on the personal New York

affairs of the returned muckraker. To get such information, the wires

between the committee who got up the dinner and his friends in New York

must have been kept hot for hours. Moreover, just after midnight, a

newsboy arrived with editions of a morning paper of which the whole

first page was devoted to him. There were many, highly-colored accounts

of all-night revelries; expense accounts, of which every second item was

champagne and every fifth bromo-selzer, etc., etc.

Of course but a limited number of papers with this extraneous sheet were

printed and those distributed only at the dinner. One, however, was sent

to the Eastern magazine which had dispatched our muckraking hero to the

Golden Gate. They replied instantly and heatedly by wire to go on with

his work, that in spite of the outrageous slander of the opposition,

they absolutely trusted him.

This was only one of an endless succession of dinners which dot the

social year with their originality.

During the course of the Exposition, the governing officials presented

so many engraved placques to California citizens and to visiting

notabilities that after a while, the Californians began to josh the

system. A certain San Franciscan is famous for much generous and

unobtrusive philanthropy. Also his self-evolved translation of the

duties of friendship is the last word on that subject. He was visited

unexpectedly at his office one day by a group of friends. With much

ceremony, they presented him with a placque - an amusing plaster

burlesque of the real article. He had the Californian sense of humor and

he thoroughly enjoyed the situation. Admitting that the joke was on him,

he celebrated according to time-honored rites. After his friends had

left, he found on his desk a small uninscribed package which had

apparently been left by accident. He opened it. Inside was a beautiful

leather box showing his initials in gold. And within the box was a small

bronze placque exquisitely engraved by a master-artist . . . bearing a

message of appreciation exquisitely phrased . . . the names of all his

friends. I know of no incident more typical of the taste and the humor

with which the Native Son performs every social function. That sense of

humor does not lessen but it lightens the gallantry and chivalry which

is the earmark of Westerners. It makes for that natural perfection of

manners which is also typical of the Native Son,

Touching the matter of their manners . . . A woman writer I know very

well once went to a boxing-match in San Francisco. Women are forbidden

to attend such events, so that a special permission had to be obtained

for her. She was warned beforehand that the audience might manifest its

disapproval in terms both audible and uncomplimentary. She entered the

arena in considerable trepidation of spirit. It was an important match -

for the lightweight championship of the world. She occupied a ring-side

box where, it is likely, everybody saw her. There were ten thousand men

in the arena and she was the only woman. But in all the two hours she

sat there, she was not once made conscious, by a word or glance in her

direction, that anybody had noticed her presence. That I think is a

perfect example of perfect mob-manners.

Perhaps that instinct, not only for fair but for chivalrous play, which

also characterizes the Native Son, comes from pioneer days. Certainly it

is deepened by a very active interest in all kinds of sports. I draw my

two examples of this from the boxing world. This is a story that Sam

Berger tells about Andrew Gallagher.

It happened in that period when both men were amateur lightweights and

Mr. Gallagher was champion of the Pacific Coast. Mr. Berger challenged

Mr. Gallagher and defeated him. The margin of victory was so narrow,

however, that Mr. Gallagher felt justified in as asking for another

match, and got it.

This time Mr. Berger's victory was complete. In a letter, Mr. Berger

said, "A woman cannot possibly understand what being a champion means to

a man. It isn't so much the championship itself but it's the slap on the

shoulder and the whispered comment as you pass, 'There goes our

champion!' that counts. Looking back at it from the thirties, it isn't

so important; but in the twenties it means a lot. My dressing room was

near Gallagher's, so that, although he didn't know this, I could not

help overhearing much that was said there. After we got back to our

rooms, I heard some friend of Gallagher's refer to me as 'a damn Jew'.

What was my delight at Gallagher's magnanimity to hear him answer, 'Why

do you call him a damn Jew? He is a very fine fellow and a better boxer

than me, the best day I ever saw.' "

That incident seems to me typical of the Native Son; and the long

unbroken friendship that grew out of it, equally so.

A few years ago an interview with Willie Ritchie appeared in a New York

paper. He had just boxed Johnny Dundee, defeating him. In passing I may

state that Mr. Ritchie was, during that winter, taking an agricultural

course at Columbia College, and that this is quite typical of the kind

of professional athlete California turns out. You would have expected

that in a long two-column interview, Mr. Ritchie would have devoted much

of the space to himself, his record, his future plans. Not at all. It

was all about Johnnie Dundee, for whom personally he seems to have an

affectionate friendship and for whose work a rueful and decidedly

humorous appreciation. He analyzed with great sapience the psychological

effect on the audience of Mr. Dundee's ring-system of perpetual motion.

He described with great delight a punch that Mr. Dundee had landed on

the very top of his head. In fact Mr. Dundee's publicity manager could

do no better than to use parts of this interview for advertising

purposes.

I began that last paragraph with the phrase, "A few years ago". But

since that time a whole era seems to have passed - that heart-breaking

era of the Great War. And now the Native Son has entered into and

emerged from a new and terrible game. He has needed - and I doubt not

displayed - all that he has of strength, natural and developed; of

keenness and coolness; of bravery and fortitude; of capacity to endure

and yet josh on.

Perhaps after all, though, the best example of the Native Son's fairness

was his enfranchisement of the Native Daughter and the way in which he

did it. Sometime, when the stories of all the suffrage fights are told,

we shall get the personal experiences of the women who worked in that

whirlwind campaign. It will make interesting reading; for it is both

dramatic and picturesque. And it will redound forever and ever and ever

to the glory of the Native Son.

The Native Son - in the truest sense of the romantic - is a romantic

figure. He could scarcely avoid being that, for he comes from the most

romantic State in the Union and, if from San Francisco, the most

romantic city in our modern world. It is, I believe, mainly his sense of

romance that drives him into the organization which he himself has

called the Native Sons of the Golden West; an adventurous instinct that

has come down to us from mediaeval times, urging men to form into

congenial company for offence and defence, and to offer personality the

opportunity for picturesque masquerade.

That romantic background not only explains the Native Son but the long

line of extraordinary fiction, with California for a background, which

California has produced. California though is the despair of fiction

writers. It offers so many epochs; such a mixture of nationalities; so

many and such violently contrasted atmospheres, that it is difficult to

make it credible. The gold rush . . . the pioneers . . . the Vigilantes

. . . the Sand Lot days . . . San Francisco before the fire . . . the

period of reconstruction. As for the drama lying submerged everywhere in

the labor movement . . . the novelists have not even begun to mine below

the surface. To the fiction-writer, the real, everyday life is so

dramatic that the temptation is to substitute for invention the literal

records of some literary moving-picture machine.

In fact, all the time you stay in California you're living in a story.

The San Franciscans will inundate you with stories of that old San

Francisco. And what stories they are! The water-front, Chinatown, the

Barbary Coast and particularly that picturesque neighborhood, south of

Market Street - here were four of the great drama-breeding areas of the

world. The San Franciscans of the past generation will tell you that the

new San Francisco is tamed and ordered. That may be all true. But to one

at least who never saw the old city, romance shows her bewildering face

everywhere in the new one. Almost anything can happen there and almost

everything does. Life explodes. It's as though there were a romantic

dynamite in solution in the air. You make a step in any direction and -

bang! - you bump into adventure. There is something about the sparkle

and bustle and gaiety of the streets . . . There is something about the

friendliness and the vivacity of the people . . . There is something

about the intimacy and color and gaiety of the restaurants. . . .

Let me tell some stories to prove my point. Anybody who has lived in San

Francisco has heard them by scores. I pick one or two at random.

A group of Native Sons were once dining in one of the little Bohemian

restaurants of San Francisco. Two of them made a bet with the others

that they could kiss every woman in the room. They went from table to

table and in mellifluous accents, plus a strain of hyperbole, explained

their predicament to each lady, concluding with a respectful demand for

a kiss. Every woman in the room (with the gallant indulgence of her

swain) acceded to this amazing request. In fifteen minutes all the

kisses were collected and the wager won. I don't know on which this

story reflects the greater credit - the Native Daughter or the Native

Son. But I do know that it couldn't have happened anywhere but in

California.

The first time I visited San Francisco shortly after the fire, I was

walking one day in rather a lonely part of the city. There were many

burnt areas about: only a few pedestrians. Presently, I saw a man and

woman leaning against a fence, absorbed in conversation. Apparently they

did not hear my approach; they were too deep in talk. They did not look

out of the ordinary and, indeed, I should not have given them a second

glance if, as I passed, I had not heard the woman say, "And did you kill

anyone else?"

A man told me that once early in the morning he was walking through

Chinatown. There was nobody else on the street except, a little distance

ahead, a child carrying a small bundle. Suddenly just as she passed, a

panel in one of the houses slid open . . . a hand came out . . . the

child slipped the bundle into the hand . . . the hand disappeared . . .

the wall panel closed up. The child trotted on as though nothing had

happened . . . disappeared around the corner. When my friend reached the

house, it was impossible to locate the panel.

A reporter I know was leaving his home one morning when there came a

ring at his telephone. "There is something wrong in apartment number

blank, house number blank, on your street," said Central. "Will you

please go over there at once?" He went. Somehow he got into the house.

Nobody answered his ring at the apartment; he had to break the door

open. Inside a very beautiful girl in a gay negligee was lying dead on a

couch, a bottle of poison on the floor beside her. He investigated the

case. The dead girl had been in the habit of calling a certain number,

and she always used a curious identifying code-phrase. The reporter

investigated that number. The rest of the story is long and thrilling,

but finally he ran down a group of lawbreakers who had been selling the

dead girl drugs, were indirectly responsible for her suicide. Do you

suppose such a ripe story could have dropped straight from the Tree of

Life into the hand of a reporter anywhere except in California?

A woman I know was once waiting on the corner for a car. Near, she

happened casually to notice, was a Chinaman of a noticeable, dried

antiquity, shuffling along under the weight of a bunch of bananas. She

was at that moment considering a curious mental problem and, in her

preoccupation, she drew her hand down the length of her face in a

gesture that her friends recognize as characteristic. Did she, by

accident, stumble on one of the secret signals of a great secret

traffic? That is her only explanation of what followed. For suddenly the

old Chinaman shuffled to her side, unobtrusively turned his back towards

her. One of the bananas on top the bunch, easy to the reach of her hand,

was opened, displaying itself to be emptied of fruit. But in its place

was something - something little, wrapped in tissue paper. Her complete

astonishment apparently warned the vendor of drugs of his mistake. He

scuttled across the street; in a flash had vanished in a back alley.

One could go on forever. I cannot forbear another. A woman was passing

through the theatrical district of San Francisco one night, just before

the theatres let out. The street was fairly deserted. Suddenly she was

accosted by a strange gentleman of suave address. Obviously he had

dallied with the demon and was spectacularly the worse for it. He was

carrying an enormous, a very beautiful - and a very expensive - bouquet.

In a short speech of an impassioned eloquence and quite as flowery as

his tribute, he presented her with the bouquet. She tried to avoid

accepting it. But this was not, without undue publicity, to be done.

Finally to put an end to the scene, she bore off her booty. She has

often wondered what actress was deprived of her over-the-foot-lights

trophy by the sudden freak of an exhilarated messenger.

I know that the Native Son works and works hard. The proof of that is

California itself. San Francisco twice rebuilt, the progressive city of

Los Angeles, all the merry enterprising smaller California cities and

towns. But, somehow, he plays so hard at his work and works so hard at

his play that you are always wondering whether it's all the time he

works or all the time he plays. At any rate, out of his work comes

gaiety and out of his play seriousness. His activities are so many that

when I try to make my imagined program of his average day, I should

provide one not of twenty-four hours, but of seventy-two.

I imagine him going down to his office at about nine in the morning,

working until noon as though driven by steam and electricity; then

lunching with a party of Native Sons, all filled with jocund japeful

joshing Native Son humor which brims over in showers of Native Son wit.

I imagine him returning to an afternoon of brief but concentrated

strenuous labor, then going for a run in the Park, or tennis, or golf,

ending with a swim; presenting himself fine and fit at his club at

first-cocktail time. I imagine him dining at his club or at a restaurant

or at a stag-dinner, always in the company of other joyous Native Sons;

going to the Orpheum, motoring through the Park afterwards; and finally

indulging in another bite before he gets to bed. Sometime during the

process, he has assisted in playing a graceful practical joke on a

trusting friend. He has attended a meeting to boost a big, new

developing project for California. He has made a speech. He has

contributed to some pressing charity. He has swung into at least two

political fights. He has attended a pageant or a fiesta or a carnival.

And he has managed to conduct his wooing of that beautiful (and

fortunate) Native Daughter who will some day become Mrs. Native Son.

Really my favorite hour is every hour.

Every hour in San Francisco is a charming hour. Perhaps my favorite

comes anywhere between six and eight. Then "The City" is brilliant with

lights; street lamps, shop windows, roof advertising signs. The hotels

are a-dance and a-dazzle with life. Flowers and greens make mats and

cushions of gorgeous color at the downtown corners. At one end of Market

Street, the Ferry building is outlined in electricity, sometimes in

color; at the other end the delicate outlines of Twin Peaks are merging

with night. Perhaps swinging towards the horizon there is a crescent

moon - that gay strong young bow which should be the emblem of

California's perpetual youth and of her augmenting power. Perhaps close

to the crescent flickers the evening star - that jewel on the brow of

night which should be a symbol of San Francisco's eternal sparkle. And,

perhaps floating over the City, a sheer high fog mutes the crescent's

gold to a daffodil yellow; winds moist gauzes over the thrilling evening

star. At the top of the high hill-streets, the lamps run in straight

strings or pendant necklaces. Down their astonishing slopes slide cars

like glass boxes filled with liquid light; motors whose front lamps

flood the asphalt with bubbling gold. If it be Christmas - and nowhere

is Christmas so Christmasy as in California - the clubs and hotels show

facades covered with jewel-designs in red and green lights; mistletoe,

holly, stack high the sidewalks on each side of the flower stands. The

beautiful Native Daughter, eyes dancing, lips smiling, dressed with much

color and more chic, is everywhere. And everywhere too, crowding the

streets, thronging the cafes, jamming the theatres, flooding the parks,

filling the endless files of motor-car, until before your very eyes,

"the city" seems to spawn men, is -

Generous, genial, gay; handsome; frank and fine; careless and care-free;

vital, virile, vigorous; engaging and debonair; witty and winning and

wise; humorous and human; kindly and courteous; high-minded,

high-hearted, high-spirited; here's to him! Ladies, this toast must be

drunk standing - the Native Son.

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext The Native Son, by Inez Haynes Irwin