ze of the West. San
Francisco is, I fancy, the only city on the globe where any musical
comedy audience is always more beautiful than any musical comedy chorus.
They are not only beautiful--they are magnificent.

Watch in the Admission Day parade for the Native Daughters of the Golden
West--stalwart, stunning young giantesses marching with a splendid
carriage and a superb poise--they seem like a new race of women.

And the climate being of such kind that, for three-quarters of the year
you can count on unvarying sunny weather, the women dress on the streets
with nothing short of gorgeousness. All the colors that the rainbow
knows and a few that it has never seen, appear here. And worn with
such chic, such verve! Not even in Paris, where may appear a more
conventional smartness, is sartorial picturesqueness carried off with
such an air of authority. Polaire, who was advertised as the ugliest
woman in the world, should have made a fortune in California. For the
Californian does not really know what female ugliness is. I have a
theory that the California men cannot quite appreciate the beauty of
their women. They take beauty for granted; they have never seen anything
else. Nevertheless, that beauty and that dash constitute a menace. A
city ordinance compels traffic policemen to wear smoked glasses, and car
conductors and chauffeurs, blinders. Go West, young man!

But everybody celebrates the beauty of the Californian woman. Probably
that is because heretofore "everybody" has been masculine. He has been
so busy looking at the California woman that he hasn't realized yet that
there's a male of the species. The California man, I sing.

It is curious what a difference of opinion there is in regard to him. I
have heard Californiacs say in their one moment of humility, "Why is
it, when we turn out such magnificent women, that our men are so
undersized?" Now I know nothing about average male heights and weights.
I have never seen any comparative statistics. I can say only that the
average Californian seems bigger than the average man. And often in
walking through the San Francisco streets the eye, ranging along the
crowd of pedestrians of average California stature, will strike on a man
who bulks a whale, a leviathan, a dread-naught, beside the others, and
rises a column, a monolith, a tower above them.

He is certainly upstanding, this average California male--running to
bulk and a little to flesh. Often the line of feature