trouble with you is that you've let these Californiacs buffalo you. What
you want to do is to throw out your chest and insist that God made Iowa
first and the rest of the world out of the leavings."

If you mention the eastern winter to a Californiac, he tells you with
great particularity of the dreadful storms he encountered there. Nothing
whatever about the beauty of the snow. To a Californiac, snow and ice
are more to be dreaded than hell-fire and brimstone. If you mention the
eastern summer, he refers in scathing terms to the puny trees we
produce, the inadequate fruits and vegetables. Nothing at all about
their delicious flavor. To a Californiac, beauty is measured only by
size. Nothing that England or France has to offer makes any impression
on the Californiac because it's different from California. As for the
glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, he simply never
sees it. The Netherlands are dismissed with one adjective - flat. For a
country to be flat is, in the opinion of the Californiac, to relinquish
its final claim to beauty. A Californiac once made the statement to me
that Californians considered themselves a little better than the rest of
the country. I considered that the prize Californiacism until I heard
the following from a woman-Californiac in Europe: "I saw nothing in all
Italy," she said, "to compare with the Italian quarter of San
Francisco."

Now I am by no means a rabid New Englander. I love the New England scene
and I have the feeling for it that we all have for the place in which we
played as children. Most New Englanders have a kind of temperamental
shyness. They are still like the English from whom they are descended.
It is difficult for them to talk about the things on which they feel
most deeply. The typical New Englander would discuss his native place
with no more ease than he would discuss his father and mother. In