"Yes," I explained, "we run close along the shore. You'll see waves and ships and sharks—may be a whale or two."
Father was even more excited. He spent most of his time on the platform or hanging from the window. "Well, I never really expected to see the Pacific," he said as we were nearing the end of our journey. "Now I'm determined to see Frisco and the Golden Gate."
"Of course—that is a part of our itinerary. You can see Frisco when you come up to visit David."
My uncle Addison who was living in a plain but roomy house, was genuinely glad to see us, and his wife made us welcome in the spirit of the Middle Border for she was one of the early settlers of Green County, Wisconsin. In an hour we were at home.
Our host was, as I remembered him, a tall thin man of quiet dignity and notable power of expression. His words were well chosen and his manner urbane. "I want you people to settle right down here with me for the winter," he said. "In fact I shall try to persuade Richard to buy a place here."
This brought out my own plan for a home in West Salem and he agreed with me that the old people should never again spend a winter in Dakota.
There was no question in my mind about the hospitality of this home and so with a very comfortable, a delightful sense of peace, of satisfaction, of security, I set out on my way to San Francisco, Portland and Olympia, eager to see California—all of it. Its mountains, its cities and above all its poets had long called to me. It meant the Argonauts and The Songs of the Sierras to me, and one of my main objects of destination was Joaquin Miller's home in Oakland Heights.
No one else, so far as I knew, was transmitting this Coast life into literature. Edwin Markham was an Oakland school teacher, Frank Norris, a college student, and Jack London a boy in short trousers. Miller dominated the coast landscape. The mountains, the streams, the pines were his. A dozen times as I passed some splendid peak I quoted his lines. "Sierras! Eternal tents of snow that flash o'er battlements of mountains."
Nevertheless, in all my journeying, throughout all my other interests, I kept in mind our design for a reunion at my uncle David's home in San José, and I wrote him to tell him when to expect us. Franklin, who was playing in San Francisco, arranged to meet me, and father and mother were to come up from Santa Barbara.
It all fell out quite miraculously as we had planned it. On the 24th of December we all met at my uncle's door.