I had not planned to have any vague unrest in this book, but it stole in upon me, unexpectedly, out there by the Golden Gate, just at the end of my journey, when I was off my guard, believing that the perils of the trip were past.
We had driven in that automobile but a few minutes, and had heard our guide speak not more than two hundred and fifty or three hundred thousand words, when my first vague feeling turned into a certainty that all was not for the best; and when I caught the eye of my companion and saw that its former drowsy look had given place to one of wild alarm, I knew that he shared my apprehension.
By the time we reached the fair grounds I had become so perturbed that I hardly knew where we were.
"Stop here," I heard our captor say to the chauffeur.
The car drew up between two glorious terracotta palaces. Directly ahead was the blue bay, and beyond it rose Mount Tamalpais in a gray-green haze. Our custodian arose from his seat, stepped to the front of the tonneau, and turning, fixed first one of us and then the other with a gaze that seemed to eat its way into our vitals. Through an awful moment of portentous silence we stared back at him like fascinated idiots. He raised one arm and swept it around the horizon. Then, of a sudden, he was off:
"Born a drowsy Spanish hamlet, fed on the intoxicants of man's lust for gold, developed by an adventurous and a baronial agriculture, isolated throughout its turbulent history from the home lands of its diverse peoples, and compelled to the outworking of its own ethical and social standards, the sovereign City of San Francisco has developed within her confines an individuality and a versatility, equaled by but few other cities, and surpassed by none."
At that point he took a breath, and a fresh start:
"It mellowed the sternness of the Puritan and disciplined the dashing Cavalier. It appropriated the unrivaled song and pristine art of the Latin. Every good thing the Anglo-Saxon, Celt, Gaul, Iberian, Teuton or almond-eyed son of Confucius had to offer, it seized upon and made part of its life."
Another breath, and it began again:
"Here is no thralldom of the past, but a trying of all things on their merits, and a searching of every proposal or established institution by the one test: Will it make life happier?"