you understand.

Yes, Reader, your worst fears are justified; I'm going to talk about
scenery. But don't say that I didn't warn you! However, as it's got to
be done sometime, why not now? I'll be perfectly fair, though; so -

For the Native Son has come from a State whose back yard is two hundred
thousand square miles (more or less) of American continent and whose
front yard is five hundred thousand square miles (less or more) or
Pacific Ocean, whose back fence is ten thousand miles (or thereabouts)
of bristling snow-capped mountains and whose front hedge is ten thousand
miles (or approximately) of golden foam-topped combers; a State that
looks up one clear and unimpeded waterway to the evasive North Pole, and
down another clear and unimpeded waterway to the elusive South Pole and
across a third clear and unimpeded water way straight to the magical,
mystical, mysterious Orient. This sense of amplitude gives the Native
Son an air of superiority . . . Yes, you're quite right, it has a touch
of superciliousness - very difficult to understand and much more
difficult to endure when you haven't seen California; but completely
understandable and endurable when you have.

- Californiacs read every word, Easterners skip this paragraph -

Man helped nature to place Italy, Spain, Japan among the wonder regions
of the world; but nature placed California there without assistance from
anybody. I do not refer alone to the scenery of California which is
duplicated in no other spot of the sidereal system; nor to the climate
which matches it; nor to its super-mundane fertility, nor to its
super-solar fecundity. The railroad folder with its voluble vocabulary
has already beaten me to it. I do not refer solely to that rich