By FRANCES E. WILLARD, President National W. C. T. U.
No. II.—SAN FRANCISCO SILHOUETTES.
This city is the whispering gallery of all nations. In Constantinople
the clamor of tongues is bewildering, while here it is more harmonious,
more representative. Here you have a polyglot at the Golden Gate, a
universal language. In the east there is no fusion; in the west one
better understands Tennyson’s vision of all earth’s banners furled
“In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.”
Of all places on the globe, go to the California metropolis if you
would feel the strong pulse of internationalism. Few have caught
its rhythm, as yet, but we must do so if we would be strong enough
to keep step with that matchless, electric twentieth century soon
to go swinging past. You can almost hear his resonant step on San
Francisco pavements; his voice whispers in the lengthening telephone,
saying, “Yesterday was good, to-day is better, but to-morrow shall
be the red-letter day of all life’s magic calendar.” I have always
been impatient of our planet’s name—“the earth.” What other, among
the shining orbs has a designation so insignificant? That we have put
up with it so long is a proof of the awful inertia of the aggregate
mind, almost as surprising as our endurance of the traffic in alcoholic
poison. With Jupiter and Venus, Orion and the Pleiades smiling down
upon us in their patronizing fashion, we have been contented to
inscribe on our visiting cards: “At Home: _The Earth!_” Out upon such
paucity of language. “The dust o’ the ground” forsooth! That answered
well enough perhaps for a dark-minded people who never even dreamed
they were living on a star. Even now an army of good folks afraid of
the next thing, just because it is the next, and not the last, will
doubtless raise holy hands of horror against the proposition I shall
proceed to launch forth for the first time, though it is harmless as
the Pope’s bull against the comet. They will probably oppose me, too,
on theologic grounds, for, as Coleridge hath it,
“Time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion.”
Nevertheless, since we do inhabit a star, I solemnly propose we cease
to call it a dirt heap, and being determined to “live up to my light,”
I hereby bring forward and clap a patent upon the name