144 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



Truly does the Western poet sing : 



" I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet 

 In yellow, sunken faces that are drifting through the street ; 



Drifting on, drifting on, 



To the scrape of restless feet; 

 I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street." 



It is interesting to contrast two faces often seen 

 side by side in Western theatres and places of 

 entertainment: the Anglo-Saxon and the Teuton. 

 The German, stolid, phlegmatic, round, and rosy, 

 has worked perhaps as hard as or even harder than 

 the restless, keen-eyed, sallow-cheeked man at his 

 side ; but now he is taking it easy. He does not 

 chatter between the acts to his wife or fiancee ; he 

 absorbs the sights and sounds in front of him with 

 evident gusto, but he gives nothing back. The 

 Native Son, on the other hand, is giving rather than 

 taking, he is entertaining his companion, instead 

 of allowing the people on the stage to do so. The 

 German goes to bed to sleep soundly till the mor- 

 row ; the Native Son lies awake for half the night, 

 pursued by a Comus rout of vagabond thoughts. 



Again, ask the German what he reads. You will 

 be surprised to find that a big fellow whom you 

 have contemptuously stigmatised as a beer-swiller 

 has read and assimilated the masterpieces of Goethe, 

 Schiller, and Heine; he talks intelligently of the 

 great historians and metaphysicians; he will tell 

 you of the triumphs achieved by his fellow-country- 

 men in pathology and therapeutics. But what will 

 particularly strike you, is the man's capacity for 

 absorbing and retaining facts that may prove of 



