exercise of any walking within her limits. Moreover the streets are tied
so intimately and inextricably to seashore and country that San
Francisco's life is, in one sense, less like city life than that of any
other city in the United States. Yet by the curious paradox of her
climate, which compels much indoor night entertainment, reinforced by
that cosmopolitanism of atmosphere, life there is city life raised to
the highest limit. Last of all, its size - and personally I think there
should be a federal law forbidding cities to grow any bigger than San
Francisco - makes it an engaging combination of provincialism and
cosmopolitanism.

Not scenery this time, Reader, nor climate, but weather. Like scenery
and climate, it must be done. Hurdle this paragraph, Easterners! Keep on
reading, Californiacs!

The "city" does its best to put the San Franciscan in good condition.
And the weather reinforces this effort by keeping him out of doors.
Because of a happy collaboration of land with sea, the region about San
Francisco, the "bay" region - individual in this as in everything else -
has a climate of its own. It is, notwithstanding its brief rainy season,
a singularly pleasant climate. It cannot be described as "temperate" in
the sense, for instance, that New England's climate is temperate. That
is too harsh. Neither can it be described as "semi-tropical" in the way
that Hawaii, for example, is semi-tropical. That is too soft. It combines
the advantages of both with the disabilities of neither.

You may begin to read again, Easterners; for at last I've returned to
the Native Son.

That sparkling briskness - the tang - which is the best the temperate