VIII 

 ANGLO-FKANCO-CALIFOENIANS 



I HAVE already spoken (figuratively) of a stone 

 wall which the Anglo-Franco-Californians have 

 built around themselves. Within that wall may 

 be found a wonderful and exact presentment of 

 European life : English men-servants, French cooks 

 and dresses, decadent pictures, five o'clock tea, eight 

 o'clock dinner, and what is inseparable from all 

 these good things — ennui. And yet a fly lurks 

 within the ointment of their luxury: the sense 

 that by the West they are regarded as a joke, an 

 extravaganza. Within the stone wall is what Dis- 

 raeli used to call the sustained splendour of a 

 stately life ; without sits Kidicule singing ribald 

 songs. 



Of the many things English to which Americans 

 have a right to strenuously object, nothing is more 

 objectionable than the stone wall, whether it be 

 concrete or abstract. In England it has definite 

 meaning, a raison d'Ure, but even in England it is 

 an open question whether the stone wall has not 

 kept out more than it kept in. In the West, the 

 stone wall is an anachronism, more, an impertinence. 

 I do not wish to be misunderstood. Life would be 

 intolerable without a certain amount of privacy 

 The exclusiveness that keeps an uncongenial neigh- 

 bour at arm's length is justifiable on the plea that 



