San Francisco I shall chiefly recollect (apart from personal reasons)
for the sparkling freshness and vigour of the air; for the extent and
variety of Golden Gate Park, where I found a bust of Beethoven, but
no sign of Bret Harte; for the vast reading-room in the library at
Berkeley, a university which is so enchantingly situated, beneath such a
sun, and in sight of such a bay, that I marvel that any work can be
done there at all; and for the miles and miles of perfect tarmac roads
fringed with burning eschscholtzias and gentle purple irises. That was
in April. I found elsewhere in America no roads comparable with these.
Even around Washington their condition was such that to ride in a
motor-car was to experience all the alleged benefits of horseback, while
in the Adirondacks, anywhere off the noble Theodore Roosevelt Memorial
Highway, with its "T.R." blazonings along the route, one's liver
was bent and broken. While I was in America the movement to purchase
Roosevelt's house as a national possession was in full swing, but this
Memorial Highway strikes the imagination with more force. That was an
inspiration, and I hope that the road will never be allowed to fall into
disrepair.