She was a little black girl about four years old, riding with her mother
on the observation seat of the California street car. She was a little
black girl and didn’t know the difference--she might have been as white
as milk for all she knew. She was poor but daintily dressed beside being
very neat.
The rest of us in the car were grown-up and white--well-dressed people
who looked as though we knew a lot. We were all riding along; we and the
little black girl with her mother, when suddenly we came out from
the surrounding wall of apartment houses into the open, facing a side
street--.
And there before us, in all its morning glory, lay the great city of
Saint Francis. It was just emerging out of fog. The smoke and steam
rising, touched into color by the sun, softened it into a great mystery
with forms and hulks coming into relief through the mists. For a moment
it wasn’t a city but a magnificent singing of the morning.
In a dull, inert way I suppose all of us, the grownup people, glimpsed
some of its beauty. But we were all intent upon the business of the
day--we didn’t look out very far--.
But the little black girl who didn’t know any better, the little black
girl raised her two arms above her head and exclaimed in a high, joyous
child voice--“GEE WHIZ!”