The
Californian Does Not Confine His Views To Abstractions.
He has his own
opinions of individual men and women.
If need be, he will analyze the
character, motives and actions of his neighbor in a way which will
horrify the traveler who has grown up in the shadow of the libel law.
The Californian is peculiarly sensitive as to his own personal freedom
of action. Toward public rights or duties, he is correspondingly
indifferent. In the times of national stress, he paid his debts in gold
and asked the same of his creditors, regardless of the laws or customs
of the rest of the United States. To him gold is still money and a
national promise to pay is not. The general welfare is not a catchword
with him. His affairs are individual. But he is not stingy for all this.
It is rather a form of largeness, of tolerance. He is as generous as the
best, and takes what the Fates send him with cheerful enthusiasm. Flood
and drought, temblor and conflagration, boom and panic - each comes in
"the day's work," and each alike finds him alert, hopeful, resourceful
and unafraid.
The typical Californian has largely outgrown provincialism. He has seen
much of the world, and he knows the varied worth of varied lands. He
travels more widely than the man of any other state, and he has the
education which travel gives. As a rule, the well-to-do Californian
knows Europe better than the average Eastern man of equal financial
resources, and the chances are that his range of experience includes
Japan, China, New Zealand and Australia as well.
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