moonlight sift through the masses of soft black-green feathers, down,
down, until strained to a diaphanous tenuity it lies a faint silver
gossamer at your feet, is to feel that you are living in one of the old
woodcuts which illustrate Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream."

Most people in first visiting California are obsessed with the flowers,
the abundant callas, the monstrous roses, the giant geraniums. But I
never ceased to wonder at the beauty of the trees. And remember, I have
not as yet seen what they call the "big" trees.

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

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

In that ideal future state in which all the world-parts are assembled
and perfectly coordinated into one vast self-governing machine, I hope
that California will be turned into a great international reservation,
given over entirely to poets, lovers and honeymoon couples. It is too