142 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



tirely during the last decade. Plastic, quick-witted, 

 eager to excel, with immense recuperative and re- 

 constructive powers, he is not so reckless as of 

 yore ; he has learned humility ; he is beginning to 

 understand himself — and his limitations. The 

 heart of the Native Son is in the right place, 

 but his head lias been cocked at a wrong angle. 

 And you can forgive him much on account of his 

 youth: he is not that detestable object — an old 

 sinner. 



The business man of the West burns his candle 

 at both ends. As a youth, his recuperative power 

 is immense ; as he nears middle age, it dwindles and 

 flickers till nothing but a spark is left. He never 

 rests. As soon as breakfast is over, he hurries to 

 his office and begins work at once ; luncheon is 

 bolted in ten minutes, food not easily digestible 

 being chosen, then more work. His dinner hour 

 finds him jaded, in no physical condition to eat and 

 digest a large meal ; yet you will see him consume 

 half a dozen courses with an appetite sharpened 

 perhaps by a cocktail or two. After dinner, does 

 he keep quiet ? Not he. The club, the theatre, 

 or his everlasting work claim him. His busy brain 

 responds to the stimulus of debate, or emotion, or 

 greed : it grinds on and on, not even stopping when 

 he crawls, spent and weary, between the sheets of 

 his bed. 



An inscrutable Providence has given America the 

 English tongue, a medium of speech unsuited to a 

 people rather Gallic than Anglo-Saxon in their 

 quickness of apprehension and power of articula- 

 tion : that is why Americans talk French so much 



