ugh to pay for
the rest of the year of study and the journey home. Then he started on
the long trip back.

In the English port at which his ship touched, he was mistaken for a
disloyal newspaper man for whom the British Secret Service had long been
seeking. He was arrested, searched and submitted to a very disquieting
third degree. When they asked him in violent explosive tones what
he went into Germany for, he replied in his mild, unexcited Western
voice--to give his brother-in-law some money. All Europe is accustomed
to crazy Americans of course, but this strained credulity to the
breaking point; for nobody who has not tried to travel in the war
countries can realize the sheer unbelievability of such guilelessness.
The British laughed loud and long. His papers were taken away and sent
to London but in a few days everything was returned. A mistake had been
made, the authorities admitted, and proper apologies were tendered.
But they released him with looks and gestures in which an abashed
bewilderment struggled with a growing irritation.

That is a typical Native Son story.

If you are an Easterner and meet the Native Son first in New York
(and the only criticism to be brought against him is that he sometimes
chooses--think of that--chooses to live outside his native State!) you
wonder at the clear-eyed composure, the calm-visioned unexcitability
with which he views the metropolis. There is a story of a San Francisco
newspaper man who landed for the first time in New York early in the
morning. Before night he had explored the city, written a scathing
philippic on it and sold it to a leading newspaper. New York had not
daunted him. It had only annoyed him. He was quite impervious to its
hydra-headed appeal. But you don't get the answer to that imperviousness
until you visit the California which has produced the Native Son. Then
you understand.

Yes, Reader, your worst fears are justified; I'm going to talk about
scenery. But don't say that I didn't warn you! However, as it's got to
be done sometime, why not now? I'll be perfectly fair, though; so--

For the Native Son has come from a State whose back yard is two hundred
thousand square miles (more or less) of American continent and whose
front yard is five hundred thousand square miles (less or more) or
Pacific Ocean, whose back fence is ten thousand miles (or thereabouts)
of bristling snow-capped mountains and whose front hedge is ten thousand
miles (or approximat