The institutions of learning in
Massachusetts account for her pre-eminence; the art spirit does it for
California. The really big men nurtured on California influence are few,
perhaps; but she has sent out an amazing number of good workers in
painting, in authorship, in music and especially in acting.
"High society" in San Francisco had settled down from the rather wild
spirit of the middle period; it had come to be there a good deal as it
is elsewhere. There was much wealth; and the hills of the western
addition were growing up with fine mansions. Outside of the city, at
Burlingame, there was a fine country club centering a region of country
estates which stretched out to Menlo Park. This club had a good polo
team, which played every year with teams of Englishmen from southern
California and even with teams from Honolulu.
The foreign quarters are worth an article in themselves. Chief of these
was, of course, Chinatown, of which every one has heard who ever heard
of San Francisco. A district six blocks long and two blocks wide, housed
30,000 Chinese when the quarter was full.
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