closing ceremonies until midnight, and then, without even picking a
flower from the abundance they were abandoning, silently and sorrowfully
to walk home.

Let's look into the claims of these Californiacs.

I can unfortunately say little about the State of California. For with
the exception of a few short trips away from San Francisco, and one
meager few days' trip into the South, I have never explored it. Nobody
warned me of the danger of such a proceeding, and so I innocently went
straight to San Francisco the first time I visited the coast. Stranger,
let me warn you now. If ever you start for California with the intention
of seeing anything of the State, do that before you enter San Francisco.
If you must land in San Francisco first, jump into a taxi, pull down the
curtains, drive through the city, breaking every speed law, to "Third
and Townsend," sit in the station until a train, - some train, any train
- pulls out, and go with it. If in crossing Market street, you raise
that taxi-curtain as much as an inch, believe me, stranger, it's all
off; you're lost. You'll never leave San Francisco. Myself, both times I
have gone to California, I have vowed to see Yosemite, the big trees,
the string of beautiful old missions which dot the state, some of the
quaint, languid, semi-tropical towns of the south, some of the brisk,
brilliant, bustling towns of the north. But I have never really done it
because I saw San Francisco first.

I treasure my few impressions of the state, however. Towns and cities,
comparatively new, might be three centuries old, so beautifully have
they sunk into the colorful, deeply configurated background that the
country provides. Even a city as thriving and wide-awake as Stockton has
about its plaza an air so venerable that it is a little like the ancient