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.