nerous as the
best, and takes what the Fates send him with cheerful enthusiasm. Flood
and drought, temblor and conflagration, boom and panic--each comes in
"the day's work," and each alike finds him alert, hopeful, resourceful
and unafraid.

The typical Californian has largely outgrown provincialism. He has seen
much of the world, and he knows the varied worth of varied lands. He
travels more widely than the man of any other state, and he has the
education which travel gives. As a rule, the well-to-do Californian
knows Europe better than the average Eastern man of equal financial
resources, and the chances are that his range of experience includes
Japan, China, New Zealand and Australia as well. A knowledge of his own
country is a matter of course. He has no sympathy with "the essential
provinciality of the mind which knows the Eastern seaboard, and has some
measure of acquaintance with countries and cities, and with men from
Ireland to Italy, but which is densely ignorant of our own vast domain,
and thinks that all which lies beyond Philadelphia belongs to the West."
Not that provincialism is unknown in California, or that its occasional
exhibition is any less absurd or offensive here than elsewhere. For
example, one may note a tendency to set up local standards for literary
work done in California. Another more harmful idea is to insist that
methods outworn in the schools elsewhere are good because they are
Californian. This is the usual provincialism of ignorance, and it is
found the world over. Especially is it characteristic of centers of
population. When men come into contact with men instead of with the
forces of nature, they mistake their own conventionalities for the facts
of existence. It is not what life is, but what "the singular mess we
agree to call life" is, that interests them. In this fashion they lose
their real understanding of affairs, become the toys of their local
environment, and are marked as provincials or tenderfeet when they stray
away from home.

California is emphatically one of "earth's male lands," to accept
Browning's classification. The first Saxon settlers were men, and in
their rude civilization women had little part. For years women in
California were objects of curiosity or of chivalry, disturbing rather
than cementing influences in society. Even yet California is essentially
a man's state. It is common to say that public opinion does not exist
there; but such a statement is not wh