There I go again! Enormous! Superb! Splendid! Spacious! You see how
impossible it is to keep your vocabulary down when California is your
subject. Another moment and I shall be saying more unique.

Remember that all his life he has gazed on beauty - beauty tragic and
haunting, beauty gorgeous and gay. Remember he is accustomed to enormous
sizes; superb heights; splendid distances; spacious vistas. That
California does not produce an annual crop of megalo-maniacs is the best
argument I know for the superiority of heredity over environment.

Remember, too, that all his life the Native Son has soaked in an art
atmosphere potentially as strong and individual as ancient Greece or
renaisance Italy. The dazzling country side, the sulphitic brew of
races, the cosmopolitan "city" have taken care of that. That art-spirit
accounts for such minor California phenomena as photography raised to
unequalled art levels and shops whose simple beautiful interiors
resemble the private galleries of art collectors; it accounts for such
major phenomena as the Stevenson monument, the "Lark", the annual Grove
Play of the Bohemian Club, and the Exposition of 1915.

The tiny monument to Stevenson, tucked away in a corner soaked with
romantic memories - Portsmouth Square - compares favorably with the
charming memorials to the French dead. It is a thing of beautiful
proportions. A little stone column supports a bronze ship, its sails
bellying robustly to the whip of the Pacific winds. The inscription - a
well known quotation from the author - is topped simply by "To remember
Robert Louis Stevenson."

Perhaps you will object that some of these are not Native Sons. But