formal and
conventional, and then, my dear, your climate!"

"Yes," another takes it up. "When I was in the East, a friend invited me
out to his place in the country. He wanted me to see his pine grove. My
dears, if you could have seen those little sticks of trees."

"I went to New York once," a third chimes in. "I never could get
accustomed to carrying an ice umbrella--I couldn't close it when I got
home. I'd come to stay for a month but I left in a week."

And so it goes. No feeling on anybody's part of your sense of outrage.
In fact, Californiacs always use the word eastern in your presence as a
synonym for cold, conventional, dull, stupid, humorless.

Sometimes it actually casts a blight--this Californoia--on those who
come to live in California. I remember saying once to a young man--just
in passing and merely to make conversation: "Are you a native son?"

His face at once grew very serious. "No," he admitted reluctantly. "You
see, it was my misfortune to be born in Iowa, but I came out here to
college. After I'd graduated I made up my mind to go into business here.
And now I feel that all my interests are in California. Of course it
isn't quite the same as being born here. But sometimes I feel as though
I really were a native son. Everybody is so kind. They do everything in
their power to make you forget--"

"Good heavens," I interrupted, "are you apologizing to me for being born
in Iowa? I've never been in Iowa, but nothing could convince me that it
isn't just as good a place as any other place, including California. The
trouble with you is that you've let these Californiacs buffalo you. What
you want to do is to throw out your chest and insist that God made Iowa
first and the rest of the world out of the leavings."

If you mention the eastern winter to a Californiac, he tells you with
great particularity of the dreadful storms he encountered there. Nothing
whatever about the beauty of the snow. To a Californiac, snow and ice
are more to be dreaded than hell-fire and brimstone. If you mention
the eastern summer, he refers in scathing terms to the puny trees we
produce, the inadequate fruits and vegetables. Nothing at all about
their delicious flavor. To a Californiac, beauty is measured only by
size. Nothing that England or France has to offer makes any impression
on the Californiac because it's different from California. As for the
glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, he simply never
sees