[28] This was changed to simple English in 1898.
[29] It is to this wind, the temperature of which varies little all the year round, that San Francisco owes her wonderfully equable climate, which is never either too hot or too cold for comfortable work or play. The mean annual temperature is about 57° Fahr., or rather higher than that of New York; but while the difference between the mean of the months is 40° at the latter city, it is about 10° only at the Golden Gate. The mean of July is about 60°, that of January about 50°. September is a shade warmer than July. Observations extending over 30 years show that the freezing point on the one hand and 80° Fahr. on the other are reached on an average only about half a dozen times a year. The hottest day of the year is more likely to occur in September than any other month.
XII
Baedekeriana
This chapter deals with subjects related to the tourist and the guidebook, and with certain points of a more personal nature connected with the preparation of "Baedeker's Handbook to the United States." Readers uninterested in topics of so practical and commonplace a character will do well to skip it altogether.
When the scheme of publishing a "Baedeker" to the United States was originally entertained, the first thought was to invite an American to write the book for us. On more mature deliberation it was, however, decided that a member of our regular staff would, perhaps, do the work equally well, inasmuch as he would combine, with actual experience in the art of guidebook making, the stranger's point of view, and thus the more acutely realise, by experiment in his own corpus vile, the points on which the ignorant European would require advice, warning, or assistance. So far as my own voice had aught to do with this decision, I have to confess that I severely grudged the interesting task to an outsider. The opportunity of making a somewhat extensive survey of the country that stood preëminently for the modern ideas of democracy and progress was a peculiarly grateful one; and I even contrived to infuse (for my own consumption) a spice of the ideal into the homely brew of the guidebook by reflecting that it would contribute (so far as it went) to that mutual knowledge, intimacy of which is perhaps all that is necessary to ensure true friendship between the two great Anglo-Saxon powers.
While thus reserving the editing of the book for one of our own household, we realised thoroughly that no approach to completeness would be attainable without the coöperation of the Americans themselves; and I welcome this opportunity to reiterate my keen appreciation of the open-handed and open-minded way in which this was accorded. Besides the signed articles by men of letters and science in the introductory part of the handbook, I have to acknowledge thousands of other kindly offices and useful hints, many of which hardly allow themselves to be classified or defined, but all of which had their share in producing aught of good that the volume may contain. So many Americans have used their Baedekers in Europe that I found troops of ready-made sympathisers, who, half-interested, half-amused, at the attempt to Baedekerise their own continent, knew pretty well what was wanted, and were able to put me on the right track for procuring information. Indeed, the book could hardly have been written but for these innumerable streams of disinterested assistance, which enabled the writer so to economise his time as to finish his task before the part first written was entirely obsolete.
The process of change in the United States goes on so rapidly that the attempt of a guidebook to keep abreast of the times (not easy in any country) becomes almost futile. The speed with which Denver metamorphosed her outward appearance has already been commented on at page 214; and this is but one instance in a thousand. Towns spring up literally in a night. McGregor in Texas, at the junction of two new railways, had twelve houses the day after it was fixed upon as a town site, and in two months contained five hundred souls. Towns may also disappear in a night, as Johnstown (Penn.) was swept away by the bursting of a dam on May 31, 1889, or as Chicago was destroyed by the great fire of 1871. These are simply exaggerated examples of what is happening less obtrusively all the time. The means of access to points of interest are constantly changing; the rough horse-trail of to-day becomes the stage-road of to-morrow and the railway of the day after. The conservative clinging to the old, so common in Europe, has no place in the New World; an apparently infinitesimal advantage will occasion a bouleversement that is by no means infinitesimal.