268 Beyond the Sierra-^. 



reaches to the top of your cane. I should have said he reaches, for this huge 

 Titan is certainly entitled to the distinction of sex. There, next the floor, 

 are his two short legs, and at the ujiper parta of his body his arms branch 

 out somewhat after the style of the arms of an East Indian deity. He looks, 

 for all the world, like an image of Buddha. You might properly set him on 

 a bracket and pour a libation to his divinity. His body is more than a foot 

 in diameter, and he weighs a hundred and seventeen pounds. How is that 

 for a beet? Many other products are of almost equally astonishing propor- 

 tions and quality. 



The feature of the display which most astonishes the observer is ita 

 variety. Here is almost everything: oranges, lemons, limes, apples, apri- 

 cots, olives, peaches, prunes, plums, citrons, cherries, figs, walnuts, almonds, 

 pecans, the whole range of vegetable products, products of the field, corn, 

 wheat, barley, oats — why, man, everything that grows in the ground or on 

 top of it, and some things belonging to the deep sea, are here at this exposi- 

 tion; and the Californians are actually aware that they have made a fine dis- 

 play ! They smile when they tell you so, and when you tell them so they 

 smile. 



I have now reached a delicate point in this essay. I mean the jealousy 

 of the California towns. No girl was ever as jealous of her first lover as one 

 of these communities is jealous on account of its good parts, and the danger 

 that they may be disparaged by comparison. Really, my dear people of the 

 California cities, it seems to us that this thing is misplaced and absurd. 

 Why should your civic communities here and there have envy and enmity 

 toward each other ? I can not conceive that any legitimate, right-minded 

 competition should engender such a feeling. On the whole, the exhibition 

 of these jealousies and bickerings is prejudicial to you in the eyes of strangers. 

 Really, you are too great, and have too many of the good things of this world, 

 to indulge in local spites. This envious disposition I have noted reaches to 

 a great distance. One town is jealous of another a hundred miles, aye, four 

 hundred miles, away. You act and sometimes speak and write as though 

 your town and city were the very loadstone toward which all the magnetic 

 atoms of enterprise in the world must be attracted; and when any atom^ 

 anywhere, persists in standing crosswise to the lines of your attraction, you 

 get mad and spit. 



It is all nonsense, my friends. I can not perceive any legitimate causes 

 for enmity between San Jose and Riverside, Napa and SanUi Rosa, Los 

 Angeles and San Diego. Of course, in so far as there is mere jocular 

 emulation between your difl'erent districts and towns it is all right, even 

 amusing. There is no malice in fun. There is no incendiarism in a 

 joke; no bloodshed in a sarcasm. Your jokes at each other's exjiense 

 are highly entertaining. This great work of art, for instance, which the 

 genius of San Joso has put up in the j)rincipal show window of her principal 

 street, to illustrate the prcKlucts and manner of life at Los Angeles, appeared 

 to me to be rather harmless — altogether harmless if inspired and understood 



