The Bohemian Club, whose real founder is said to have been the late
Henry George, was formed in the '70s by newspaper writers and men
working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a membership
of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers, musicians and
actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group of men, and
hospitality was their avocation. Yet the thing which set this club off
from all others in the world was the midsummer High Jinks.

The club owns a fine tract of redwood forest fifty miles north of San
Francisco on the Russian River. There are two varieties of big trees in
California: the Sequoia gigantea and the Sequoia sempervirens. The great
trees of the Mariposa grove belong to the gigantea species. The
sempervirens, however, reaches the diameter of 16 feet, and some of the
greatest trees of this species are in the Bohemian Club grove. It lies
in a cleft of the mountains: and up one hillside there runs a natural
out of doors stage of remarkable acoustic properties.

In August the whole Bohemian Club, or such as could get away from
business, went up to this grove and camped out for two weeks. On the
last night they put on the Jinks proper, a great spectacle in praise of
the forest with poetic words, music and effects done by the club. In
late years this has been practically a masque or an opera. It cost about
$10,000. It took the spare time of scores of men for weeks; yet these
750 business men, professional men, artists, newspaper workers,
struggled for the honor of helping out on the Jinks; and the whole thing
was done naturally and with reverence. It would not be possible anywhere
else in this country; the thing which made it possible was the art
spirit which is in the Californian. It runs in the blood.

"Who's Who in America" is long on the arts and on learning and