school of cookery is that you can pay as little as you please for your
dinner or as much as you please. There are three standbys of the
exchange editor that may be counted upon to appear in the newspapers
about once in so often. One is the hoary-headed and toothless tale
regarding the artist who was hired to renovate religious paintings in a
church in Brussels, and turned in an itemized account including such
entries as--"Correcting the Ten Commandments"; "Restoring the Lost
Souls"; "Renewing Heaven"; and winding up with "Doing Several Odd Jobs
for the Damned."
The second of the set comes out of retirement at frequent
intervals--whenever some trusting soul runs across a time-stained number
of the Ulster Gazette giving details of the death of George
Washington--I wonder how many million copies of that venerable
counterfeit were printed--and writes in to his home editor about it.
And the third, the most popular clipping of the three, concerns the
prices that used to govern at the mining camps in the days of the early
gold rush. The story that is most commonly quoted has to do with the
menu of the El Dorado Hotel, at Placerville, where bean soup was a
dollar a plate; hash, lowgrade, seventy-five cents; hash,
eighteen-carat, a dollar--and so on down the list to seventy-five cents
for two Irish potatoes, peeled.
The cost of living may have gone down subsequently in those parts, but
it has gone back up again--at certain favored spots. If the Argonauts,
those hardy adventurers who flung their gold round so regardlessly and
were not satisfied unless they paid outrageously big prices for
everything, could come back today they would have no cause to complain
at the contemptible paucity of the bill after they had dined at any one
of half a dozen ultra-expensive hotels that are to be found dotted along
the Coast.
I append herewith a few items selected at random from the price card of
a fashionable establishment in one of the larger Coast cities: caviar
imperial d'Astracan, two dollars for a double portion; buffet
Russe--whatever that is--ninety cents; German asparagus, a single
helping, one dollar and forty cents; blue-point oysters, fifty cents;
fifty cents for clams; Gorgonzola cheese, fifty cents a portion; and,
in a land where peaches and figs grow anywhere and everywhere,
seventy-five cents for an order of brandied peaches and fifty cents for
an order of spiced figs. Even seasoned New Yorkers have been known to
breathe hard on receiving a check for a full meal at certain restaurants
in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
On the other hand, you can step round any corner in San Francisco and
walk into that institution which people in other large cities are
forever seeking and never finding--a table-d'hote restaurant where a
perfect meal is to be had at a most moderate price. The best Italian
restaurant in the world--and I wish to say, after personal experience,
that Sunny Italy itself is not barred--is a little place on the fringe
of the Barbary Coast.
There is another place not far away where, for a dollar, you get a
bottle of good domestic wine and a selection from the following range of
dishes: Celery, ripe olives, green olives, radishes, onions, lettuce,
sliced tomatoes, combination salad or crab-meat salad; soup--onion or
consomme; fish--sole, salmon, bass, sand dabs, mussels or clams;
entrees--sweetbreads with mushrooms, curry of lamb, calf's tongue, tripe
with peppers, tagliatini a l'Italienne, or boiled kidney with bacon;
vegetables--asparagus, string-beans and cauliflower; roast--spring lamb
with green peas, broiled chicken or broiled pig's feet; dessert--rhubarb
pie, ice cream and cake, apple sauce, stewed fruits, baked pear or baked
apple, mixed fruits; cheese of three varieties, and coffee to wind up
on.
The proprietor doesn't cut out his portions with a pair of buttonhole
scissors, either, or sauce them with a medicine-dropperful of gravy. He
gives a big, full, satisfying helping, well cooked and well served.
There is some romance in the San Francisco cooking, too, if the
oldtimers who bemourn the old days only realized it.
If this seeming officiousness on the part of a passing wayfarer may be
excused there is one more suggestion I should like to throw off for the
benefit of the promoters of the exposition. Living somewhere in
California is a man who should be looked up before the gates are opened,
and he should be retained at a salary and staked out in suitable
quarters as a special and added attraction. He is the most magnificent
fish-liar in the known world! I do not know his name--he was so busy
pouring fish stories down a party of us that he didn't take time to stop
and tell his name--but no great difficulty should be experienced in
finding him. There is only one of him alive--these world's wonders never
occur in pairs. That would cheapen them and make them commonplace.
He swam into our ken--if a mixed metaphor may be pardoned--on a train
leaving Oakland for the East. We were sitting in the club car--half a
dozen or so of us--when he drifted along. At first look no one would
have suspected him of being so gifted a creature as he proved himself to
be. He was a round, short, tub-shaped man, with a button nose, and a
double chin that ran all the way round and lapped over at the back. But,
though his appearance was deceiving, anybody could tell with half an
eye that he excelled in extemporaneous conversation. Right off he began
shadow-boxing and sparring about, waiting for an opening. In a minute he
got it.
The tall man with the long face and the stiff white pompadour, who
looked like a patent toothbrush, gave him his chance. The tall man
happened to look out of the car window and see in an inlet a fleet of
beached fishing boats, and he remarked on their picturesqueness. That
was the cue.
"Speaking of fishing," said the button-nosed man, "I'll tell you people
something that'll maybe interest you. You may not believe it, either, me
being a stranger to you; but it's the Gospel truth or I wouldn't be
sitting here a-telling it. I reckon I've done more fishing in my day and
more different kinds of fishing than any man alive. I come originally
from a prime fishing state--Michigan--and I've lived in Colorado and
Montana and Oregon and all the other good fishing states out West. But,
take it from me, friends, California is the best fishing state there is.
Yes, sir; when it comes to fishing, old California lays it over 'em
all--she takes the rag right off the bush! I'm the one that oughter know
because I've fished her from end to end and crossways--sea fishing,
creek fishing, lake fishing and all.
"Down at Catalina they'll tell you, if you ask 'em, that I'm the man
that ketched the biggest tuna that ever come out of that ocean. It took
me fourteen hours and forty-five minutes to land him, and during that
time he towed me and an eighteen-foot boat, and the fellow I had along
for boatman, over forty-four miles--I measured it afterward to be
sure--and the friction of the reel spinning round wore my line down till
it wasn't no thicker in places than a cobweb. But tunas ain't my regular
specialty--trouts and basses are my special favorites; and up in the
mountains is where I mostly do my fishing.
"I'm just sort of hanging round now waiting for the snow to move out
so's I can go up there and start fishing.
"Well, sirs, it's funny, ain't it, the way luck will run fishing? Oncet
when I was living up there I fished stiddy, day in and day out, for two
seasons and never got a bite that you could rightly call a bite. And
then all of a sudden one afternoon the luck switched and in exactly
forty-five minutes by the watch--by this here very watch I'm carrying
now in my pocket--I ketched seventy-two of them big old black basses out
of one hole; and they averaged five pounds apiece!"
We looked at one another silently. A total of seventy-two five-pound
bass in three-quarters of an hour seemed a little too much to be taken
as a first dose from a strange practitioner. And it was hard to believe
they had all been basses; if only for the sake of variety there should
have been at least one barytone. We felt that we needed time for
reflection--and digestion.
Evidently realizing this, one of our number undertook to throw himself
into the breach. As I recollect, this volunteer was the fat coffin
drummer from Des Moines who had the round, smooth face and the round,
bald head, and wore the fuzzy green hat with the bow at the back. I
think he wore the bow there purposely--it simplified matters so when you
were trying to decide which side of his head his face grew on. He heaved
a pensive sigh out of his system and remarked upon the clearness of the
air in these parts.
"You're right there, mister," broke in the button-nosed man, snapping
him up instantly. "The air is tolerable clear here today; but you
oughter to see the air up in the mountains! Why, it's so clear up there
it would make this here hill-country air look like a fog. I remember
oncet I was browsing along a cliff up in that country, toting my
fishpole, and I happened to look over the bluff--just so--and down below
I saw a hole in the creek that was just crawling with them big
trouts--steel-head trouts and rainbow trouts. I could see the spots on
their sides and their fins waving, and their gills working up and down.
"I figured out that it was fully a hundred feet down to the water and
the water would natchelly be tolerable deep; so I let all my line run
off the reel, a hundred and sixty feet of it; and I fished and fished
and fished--and didn't get a strike, let alone a nibble. Yet I could
look over and see all these hungry trouts down below looking up with
expectant looks in their eyes--I could see their eyes--and jumping round
regardless; and yet not a bite! So I changed bait--changed from live
bait to dead bait, and back again to live--and still there wasn't
nothing doing. So I says to myself: 'Something's wrong, sure! This
thing'll stand looking into.'
[Illustration: IT'S A GREAT THING OUT THERE TO BE A NATIVE SON]
"So I snoops round and finds a place where there's a sort of a sloping
place in the bluff; and I braces my pole in a rock and leaves it there;
and I climbs down--and then I sees what's the matter. It was that there
clear air that had fooled me! It was three hundred feet if it was an
inch down from the top of that there bluff to the creek, and the hole
was fully a hundred feet deep--maybe more; and away down at the plumb
bottom all them trouts was congregated in a circlelike, looking up
mighty greedy and longing at my bait, which was a live frog, dangling
two hundred and forty-odd feet up in the air. But, speaking of clear
air, that wasn't nothing at all compared to some other things I could
tell you about. Another time----"
At this point I rose and escaped to the diner. When I got back at the
end of an hour the other survivors told me that, up to the time he got
off at Sacramento, the button-nosed man had been getting better and
better all the time. He certainly ought to be rounded up and put on
exhibition at the Fair to show those puny and feeble Eastern fish-liars
what the incomparable Western climate can produce.
I almost forgot to mention San Francisco's chief product--Native Sons. A
Native Son is one who has acquired special merit by being born in the
state. You would think credit would be given to the subject's parents,
where it belongs; but, no--that is not the California way. It's a great
thing out there to be a Native Son. It counts in politics, and in
society, and at the clubs.
And, after that, the next best thing is to be a Southerner, either by
birth or descent. People who have Southern blood in their veins are
very proud of it and can join a club on the strength of it; and some of
them do a lot of talking about it. The definition is rather
elastic--anybody whose ancestors worked on the Southern Pacific is
eligible, I think.
Of course, there are a lot of real Southerners; but there are a whole
lot more who--so it seemed to me--are giving remarkably realistic
imitations of the type known in New York as the Professional Southerner.
San Francisco excels in Southerners--the regular kind and the self-made
kind both.
I was out there too early in the year to meet the justly celebrated San
Francisco flea. He's a Native Son, too; but there isn't so much bragging
being done on his account.
_LOOKING FOR LO_
[Illustration]
_Looking for Lo_
IF it is your desire to observe the Red Indian of the Plains engaged in
his tribal sports and pastimes wait for the Wild West Show; there is
sure to be one coming to your town before the season is over. Or if you
are bloodthirsty by nature and yearn to see him prancing round upon the
warpath, destroying the hated paleface and strewing the soil with his
shredded fragments, restrain your longings until next fall and then
arrange to take in the football game between Carlisle and Princeton.
But, whatever you do, do not go journeying into the Far West in the hope
of finding him in great number upon his native heath, for the chances
are that you won't find him there in great number; and if you do he will
probably be a considerable disappointment to you; because, unless he is
paid for it, the red brother absolutely declines to be picturesque.
I am reliably informed that he is still reasonably numerous in Oklahoma,
in North and South Dakota, and in Montana and Washington; but my
itinerary did not include those states. I did not see a live
Indian--that is to say, a live Indian recognizable as such--in Nevada or
in Colorado or in Utah, or in a four-hour run across one corner of
Wyoming.
In upward of a thousand miles of travel through California I saw just
one Indian--a bronze youth of perhaps twenty summers and, I should say,
possibly half that many baths. He was wearing the scenario of a pair of
overalls and a straw hat in an advanced state of decrepitude, and he was
working in a truckpatch; if a native had not told me what he was I would
have passed him by for a sunburnt hired hand.
I saw a few Indians in New Mexico and a few more in Arizona, but not a
great many at that; and these, as I found out later, were mainly engaged
to linger in the vicinity of stations and hotels along the line for the
purpose of adding a touch of color to the surroundings and incidentally
selling souvenirs to the tourists.
Mind you, I'm not saying there are not plenty of Indians in those
states; but they mostly stay on their reservations and the reservations
unfortunately are not, as a rule, near the railroad stations. A traveler
going through the average small Southern town sees practically the
entire strength of the colored citizenry gathered at the depot and jumps
at the conclusion that the population is from ninety to ninety-five per
cent. black. In the West he sees maybe one little Indian settlement in a
stretch of five or six hundred miles, and he figures that the Indian is
practically an extinct species.
Of course, though, he is not extinct. In these piping commercial days of
acute competition he has no time to be gallivanting down to the depot
every time a through train rolls in, especially as the depot is
frequently eighty or ninety miles distant from his domicile. He is
closely confined at home turning out souvenirs. It is a pity, too, that
he cannot spare more of his time for this simple and inexpensive
pleasure. In one week's study of the passing tourist breed he could see
enough funny sights and hear enough funny things--unintentionally funny
things--to keep his family entertained on many a long winter's evening
as they sit peacefully in the wigwam making knickknacks for the Eastern
trade.
[Illustration: EACH NAVAJO SQUAW WEAVES ON AN AVERAGE NINE THOUSAND
BLANKETS A YEAR]
No, sirree! Those Southwestern tribes are far from being
extinct--especially the Navajos. You can, in a way, approximate the
tribal strength of the Navajos by the number of Navajo blankets you see.
From Colorado to the Coast the Navajo blanket carpets the earth. I'll
bet any amount within reason that in six weeks' time I saw ten million
Navajo blankets if I saw one. As for other things--bows and arrows, for
example--well, I do not wish to exaggerate; but had I bought all the
wooden bows and arrows that were offered to me I could take them and
build a rustic footbridge across the Delaware River at Trenton, with a
neat handrail all the way over. Taking the figures of the last census as
a working basis I calculate that each Navajo squaw weaves, on an
average, nine thousand blankets a year; and while she is so engaged her
husband, the metal worker of the establishment, is producing a couple of
tons of silver bracelets set with turquoises. For prolixity of output I
know of no female in the entire animal kingdom that can compare with the
Navajo squaw--unless it is the lady Potomac shad.
Right here I wish to claim one proud distinction: I went from the
Atlantic to the Pacific and back again--and I did not buy a single
blanket! Since the return of the Lewis & Clark expedition I am probably
the only white person who has ever done this. Goodness knows the call
was strong enough and the opportunities abundant enough; blankets were
available for my inspection at every railroad station, at every hotel,
and at every one of two hundred thousand souvenir stores that I
encountered--but I was under orders from headquarters.
As we were bidding farewell to our family before starting West, our wife
said to us in firm, decided accents: "I have already picked out a place
where we can hide the Cheyenne war-bonnet. We can get rid of the
moccasins and the stone hatchets and the beadwork breastplates by
storing them in a trunk up in the attic. But do not bring a Navajo
blanket back to this already crowded establishment!" So we restrained
ourselves. But it was a hard struggle and took a heroic effort.
I recall one blanket, done in gray and black and red and white, and
decorated with the figures of the Thunder Bird and the Swastika, the
Rising Sun and the Jig Saw, and other Indian signs, symbols and emblems.
It was with the utmost difficulty that I wrenched myself away from the
vicinity of this treasure. And then, when I got back home, feeling proud
as Punch over having withstood temptation in all its forms, almost the
first words I heard, spoken in tones of deep disappointment, were these:
"Well, why didn't you bring a Navajo blanket for the den? You know we've
always wanted one!" Wasn't that just like a woman?
Though I refrained from seeking bargains in the blankets of the
aborigine, I sought diligently enough for the aborigine himself. I had
my first glimpse of him in Northern New Mexico just after we had come
down out of Colorado. Accompanied by his lady, he was languidly reposing
on the platform in front of a depot, with his wares tastefully arranged
at his feet. As a concession to the acquired ideals of the Eastern
visitor he had a red sofa tidy draped round his shoulders, and there was
a tired-looking hen-feather caught negligently in his back hair; and his
squaw displayed ornamented leggings below the hems of her simple calico
walking skirt. But these adornments, I gathered, constituted the calling
costume, so to speak.
When at home in his village the universal garment of the Pueblo male is
the black sateen shirt of commerce. He puts it on and wears it until it
is taken up by absorption, and then it is time to put on another. These
shirts do not require washing; but, among the best Pueblo families, I
understand it is customary--once in so often--to have them searched.
And thus is the wild life of the West kept down.
Farther along the line, in Arizona, we met the Hopi and the
Navajo--delegations from both of these tribes having been imported from
the reservations to give an added touch of picturesqueness to the
principal hotel of the Grand Canon. The Hopi, who excels at snake
dancing and pottery work, is a mannerly little chap; and his daughter,
with her hair done up in elaborate whorl effects in fancied imitation of
the squash blossom--the squash being the Hopi emblem of purity--is a
decidedly attractive feature of the landscape.
The Hopi women are industrious little bodies, clever at basket
weaving--and the men work, too, when not engaged in attending lodge; for
the Hopis are the ritualists of the Southwest, and every Hopi is a
confirmed joiner. Their secret societies exist to-day, uncorrupted and
unchanged, just as they have survived for hundreds and perhaps thousands
of years. In the Hopi House at Grand Canon there is a reproduction of a
kiva or underground temple. It isn't underground--it is located
upstairs; but in all other regards it is supposed to conform exactly to
one of the real ceremonial chambers of the Hopis. The dried-mud walls
are covered thickly with symbolic devices, painted on; and there is an
altar tricked out with totems of the Powamu clan, one of the biggest of
these societies.
Just in front of the altar, with its wooden figures of the War God, the
God of Growing Things, and the God of Thunder, is a sand painting set in
the floor like a mosaic. When one of the clans is getting ready for a
service the official high priest or medicine man of that particular clan
sprinkles clean brown sand upon the flat earth before the altar and upon
this foundation, by trickling between his thumb and forefinger tiny
streams of sands of other colors, he makes the mystic figures that he
worships. After the rites are over he obliterates the design with his
hand, leaving the space bare for the next clan.
In the Hopi House at Grand Canon a sand painting sacred to the Antelope
clan is preserved under glass for the benefit of visitors. The manager
of the establishment, a Mr. Smith, who has spent most of his life among
the tribes of Arizona, told us a story about this.
Two years ago this summer, a party of Mystic Shriners on an excursion
visited the canyon. Mr. Smith chaperoned one group of them on their tour
through the Hopi House. In the sand painting of the kiva they seemed to
find something that particularly interested them. They put their heads
together, talking in undertones and pointing--so Smith said--first at
one design and then at another. An old Hopi buck, a priest of the
Antelope clan, was lounging in the low doorway watching them. What the
Shriners said to one another could have had no significance for him,
even admitting that he heard them, for he did not understand a word of
English; but suddenly he reached forth a withered hand and plucked Smith
by the sleeve. I am letting Smith tell the rest of the tale just as he
told it to us:
"The Hopi pointed to one of the Shriners, an elderly man who came, I
think, from somewhere in Illinois, and in his own tongue he said to me:
'That man with the white hair is a Hopi--and he is a member of my clan!'
I said to him: 'You speak foolishness--that man comes from the East and
never until to-day saw a Hopi in his whole life!' The medicine man
showed more excitement than I ever saw an Indian show.
"'You are lying to me!' he said. 'That white-haired man is a Hopi, or
else his people long ago were Hopis.' I laughed at him and that ruffled
his dignity and he turned away, and I couldn't get another word out of
him.
"As the Shriners were passing out I halted the white-haired man and said
to him: 'The Hopi medicine man insists that you are a Hopi and that you
know something about his clan.' 'Well,' he said, 'I'm no Hopi; but I
think I do know something about some of the things he seems to revere.
Where is this medicine man?'
"I pointed to where the old Indian was squatted in a corner, sulking; he
walked right over to him and motioned to him, and the Hopi got up and
they went into the kiva together. I do not know what passed between
them--certainly no words passed--but in about ten minutes the Shriner
came out, and he had a puzzled look on his face.
"'I've just had the most wonderful experience,' he said to me, 'that
I've ever had in my whole life. Of course that Indian isn't a Mason, but
in a corrupted form he knows something about Masonry; and where he
learned it I can't guess. Why, there are lodges in this country where I
actually believe he could work his way in.'"
Not being either a Mason or a Hopi, I cannot undertake to vouch for the
story or to contradict it; but Smith has the reputation of being a
truthful man.