ground, which
California has produced. California though is the despair of fiction
writers. It offers so many epochs; such a mixture of nationalities; so
many and such violently contrasted atmospheres, that it is difficult to
make it credible. The gold rush... the pioneers... the Vigilantes ...
the Sand Lot days... San Francisco before the fire... the period of
reconstruction. As for the drama lying submerged everywhere in the labor
movement... the novelists have not even begun to mine below the surface.
To the fiction-writer, the real, everyday life is so dramatic that the
temptation is to substitute for invention the literal records of some
literary moving-picture machine.

In fact, all the time you stay in California you're living in a story.

The San Franciscans will inundate you with stories of that old San
Francisco. And what stories they are! The water-front, Chinatown, the
Barbary Coast and particularly that picturesque neighborhood, south of
Market Street--here were four of the great drama-breeding areas of the
world. The San Franciscans of the past generation will tell you that the
new San Francisco is tamed and ordered. That may be all true. But to one
at least who never saw the old city, romance shows her bewildering face
everywhere in the new one. Almost anything can happen there and almost
everything does. Life explodes. It's as though there were a romantic
dynamite in solution in the air. You make a step in any direction
and--bang!--you bump into adventure. There is something about the
sparkle and bustle and gaiety of the streets... There is something about
the friendliness and the vivacity of the people... There is something
about the intimacy and color and gaiety of the restaurants....

Let me tell some stories to prove my point. Anybody who has lived in San
Francisco has heard them by scores. I pick one or two at random.

A group of Native Sons were once dining in one of the little Bohemian
restaurants of San Francisco. Two of them made a bet with the others
that they could kiss every woman in the room. They went from table to
table and in mellifluous accents, plus a strain of hyperbole, explained
their predicament to each lady, concluding with a respectful demand
for a kiss. Every woman in the room (with the gallant indulgence of
her swain) acceded to this amazing request. In fifteen minutes all the
kisses were collected and the wager won. I don't know on which this
story reflects the greater credi