of his strength in being not himself, but what some dozens of other
people expect him to be. There is no room for spreading branches, and
the characteristic qualities and fruitage develop only at the top. On
the frontier men grow as the California white oak, which, in the open
field, sends its branches far and wide.

With plenty of elbow-room the Californian works out his own inborn
character. If he is greedy, malicious, intemperate, by nature, his bad
qualities rise to the second degree in California, and sometimes to the
third. The whole responsibility rests on himself. Society has no part of
it, and he does not pretend to be what he is not, out of deference to
society. "Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue," but in
California no such homage is demanded or accepted. In like manner, the
virtues become intensified in freedom. Nowhere in the world can one find
men and women more hospitable, more refined, more charming than in the
homes of prosperous California. And these homes, whether in the pine
forests of the Sierras, in the orange groves of the south, in the peach
orchards of the Coast range, or on the great stock ranches, are the
delight of all visitors who enter their open doors. To be sure, the
bewildering hospitality of the great financiers and greater gamblers of
the sixties and seventies is a thing of the past. We shall never again
see such prodigal entertainment as that which Ralston, bankrupt,
cynical, and magnificent, once dispensed in Belmont Cañon. Nor do we
find, nowadays, such lavish outgiving of fruit and wine, or such rushing
of tally-hos, as once preceded the auction sale of town lots in paper
cities. These gorgeous "spreads" were not hospitality, and disappeared
when the traveler had learned his lesson. Their avowed purpose was "the
sale of worthless land to old duffers from the East." But real
hospitality is characteristic of all parts of California where men and
women have an income beyond the needs of the day.