minute delicacy of a gleeful, elfin world. I challenge the earth to
produce a region more beautiful, yet also more gay and debonair in
natural connotation, than the one which enfolds San Francisco. For here
the water presents gorgeous, plastic color, alternating blue and gold.
Here Mount Tamalpais lifts its long straight slopes out of the sea and
thrusts them high in the sky. Here Marin County offers contours of
dimpled velvet bursting with a gay irridescence of wildflowers. Yet that
same gracious area frames the grim cliff-cup which holds San Francisco
bay - a spot of Dantesque sheerness and bareness.

- and this.

This is what nature has done. But man has added his deepening touch in
one direction and his enlivening touch in another. The early fathers -
Spanish - erected Missions from one end of the State to the other. These
are time-mellowed, mediaeval structures with bell-towers, cloisters and
gardens, sunbaked, shadow-colored; and in spots they make California as
old and sad as Spain. Later emigrants - French - have built in the
vicinity of San Francisco many tiny roadside inns where one can drink
the soft wines of the country. Framed in hills that are garlanded with
vineyards, these inns are often mere rose-hidden bowers. They make
California seem as gay as France. I can best put it by saying that I
know of no place so "haunted" in every poetic and plaintive sense as
California; yet I know of no place so perfectly suited to carnival and
festival.

All of this is part of the reason why you can't surprise a Californian.

This looks like respite, but there's no real relief in sight Easterners.
Keep right on reading, Californiacs!