quickly-fading wild flowers, gathered by school children, inconsistently
abandoned upon roadsides, or as inconsistently treasured as limp and
flabby superstitions in their desks. The chill wind from the Bay blowing
in at my window seemed to rustle them into sad articulate appeal. I
remember that when one of them was whisked from the window by a
stronger gust than usual, and was attaining a circulation it had never
known before, I ran a block or two to recover it. I was young then, and
in an exalted sense of editorial responsibility which I have since
survived, I think I turned pale at the thought that the reputation of
some unknown genius might have thus been swept out and swallowed by the
all-absorbing sea.

There were other difficulties arising from this unexpected wealth of
material. There were dozens of poems on the same subject. 'The Golden
Gate,' 'Mount Shasta,' 'The Yosemite,' were especially provocative. A
beautiful bird known as the 'Californian Canary' appeared to have been
shot at and winged by every poet from Portland to San Diego. Lines to
the 'Mariposa' flower were as thick as the lovely blossoms themselves in
the Merced Valley, and the Madrone tree was as 'berhymed' as Rosalind.
Again, by a liberal construction of the publisher's announcement,
_manuscript_ poems, which had never known print, began to coyly unfold
their virgin blossoms in the morning's mail. They were accompanied by a
few lines stating, casually, that their sender had found them lying
forgotten in his desk, or, mendaciously, that they were 'thrown off' on
the spur of the moment a few hours before. Some of the names appended to
them astonished me. Grave, practical business men, sage financiers,
fierce speculators, and plodding traders, never before suspected of
poetry, or even correct prose, were among the contributors. It seemed as
if most of the able-bodied inhabitants of the Pacific Coast had been in
the habit at some time of expressing themselves in verse. Some sought
confidential interviews with the editor. The climax was reached when, in
Montgomery Street, one day, I was approached by a well-known and
venerable judicial magnate. After some serious preliminary conversation,
the old gentleman finally alluded to what he was pleased to call a task
of 'great delicacy and responsibility' laid upon my 'young shoulders.'
'In fact,' he went on paternally, adding the weight of his judicial hand
to that burden, 'I have thought of speaking to you