"Talk. Talk. Talk.… Good lines and no action … said all … not even promising first act … eighth failure and season more than half over … rather be a playwright and fail than a critic compelled to listen to has-beens and would-bes trying to put over bad plays.… Oh, for just one more great... Read More

There was no Burlingame in the Sixties, the Western Addition was a desert of sand dunes and the goats gambolled through the rocky gulches of Nob Hill. But San Francisco had its Rincon Hill and South Park, Howard and Fulsom and Harrison Streets, coldly aloof from the tumultuous hot heart of the City north of... Read More

TO DR. ALANSON WEEKS OF SAN FRANCISCO Several people who enter casually into this novel are leading characters in other novels and stories of the "California Series," which covers the social history of the state from the beginning of the last century. They are Gwynne, his mother, Lady Victoria Gwynne, Isabel Otis and the Hofers... Read More

TO CHARLES HANSON TOWNE Price Ruyler knew that many secrets had been inhumed by the earthquake and fire of San Francisco and wondered if his wife's had been one of them. After all, she had been born in this city of odd and whispered pasts, and there were moments when his silent mother-in-law suggested a... Read More

Countess Gisela Niebuhr sat in the long dusk of Munich staring over at the beautiful park that in happier days had been famous in the world as the Englischer Garten, and deliberately recalled on what might be the last night of her life the successive causes that had led to her profound dissatisfaction with her... Read More

TO "ETERNAL FRANCE" If this little book reads more like a memoir than a systematic study of conditions, my excuse is that I remained too long in France and was too much with the people whose work most interested me, to be capable, for a long while, at any rate, of writing a detached statistical... Read More

Mrs. Balfame had made up her mind to commit murder. As she stared down at the rapt faces of the fifty-odd members of the Friday Club, upturned to the distinguished speaker from New York, whom she, as President, had introduced in those few words she so well knew how to choose, it occurred to her... Read More

France to-day is sharply divided into two sections; within the greater you can come and go almost as freely as before the war. All that is necessary is a sauf conduit easily obtained from your commissaire de police, which you are never called upon to exhibit. But the other, the Zone des Armées, in common... Read More

TO MRS. SPENCER WIGLEY, OF ST. KITTS, B. W. I. “We are all souls of fire and children of the sun.” Helmholtz Bath House. This hotel was erected in 1804 at a cost of £40,000, although built entirely by slaves. Its varied and brilliant career came to an end some time in the forties. The... Read More

TO Emma Beatrice Brunner Miss Thangue, who had never seen her friend's hand tremble among the teacups before, felt an edge on her mental appetite, stimulating after two monotonous years abroad. It was several minutes, however, before she made any effort to relieve her curiosity, for of all her patron-friends Victoria Gwynne required the most... Read More

A long list of works Gertrude Atherton has to her credit as a writer. She is indisputably a woman of genius. Not that her genius is distinctively feminine, though she is in matters historical a passionate partisan. Most of the critics who approve her work agree that in the main she views life with somewhat... Read More

The California cousin of the Lyman T. Moultons—a name too famous to be shorn——stood apart from the perturbed group, her feet boyishly asunder, her head thrown back. Above her hung the thick white clusters of the acacia,[1] drooping abundantly, opaque and luminous in the soft masses of green, heavy with perfume. All Lyons seemed to... Read More

The great author had realized one of the dreams of his ambitious youth, the possession of an ancestral hall in England. It was not so much the good American's reverence for ancestors that inspired the longing to consort with the ghosts of an ancient line, as artistic appreciation of the mellowness, the dignity, the aristocratic... Read More

Jessica, her hands clenched and teeth set, stood looking with hard eyes at a small heap of letters lying on the floor. The sun, blazing through the open window, made her blink unconsciously, and the ocean’s deep voice rising to the Newport sands seemed to reiterate:— “Contempt! Contempt!” Tall, finely pointed with the indescribable air... Read More

TO THE BOHEMIAN CLUB OF SAN FRANCISCO AS A SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ITS COURTESY IN PLACING ITS FINE LIBRARY OF CALIFORNIAN LITERATURE AT MY DISPOSAL This is a revised and enlarged edition of the volume which was issued some years ago under the title, "Before the Gringo Came." Within memory of the most gnarled and... Read More

"When, Mr. President, a man, however eminent in other pursuits and whatever claims he may have to public confidence, becomes a member of this body, he has much to learn and much to endure. Little does he know of what he will have to encounter. He may be well read in public affairs, but he... Read More

Two horses were laboriously pulling a carriage through the dense thickets and over the sandhills which in the early Sixties still made an ugly breach between San Francisco and its Presidio. The difficulties of the course were not abridged by the temper of the night, which was torn with wind and muffled in black. During... Read More

TO GEORGE AND GILBERT JONES Of New York WITHOUT WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT THIS YARN WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN FINISHED Roldan Castanada walked excitedly up and down the verandah of his father's house, his thumbs thrust into the red silk sash that was knotted about his waist, his cambric shirt open at the throat as if pulled... Read More

"I won't study another word to-day!" Helena tipped the table, spilling the books to the floor. "I want to go out in the sun. Go home, Miss Phelps, that's a dear. Anyhow, it won't do you a bit of good to stay." Miss Phelps, young herself, glanced angrily at her briery charge, longingly at the... Read More

TO M. PAUL BOURGET, Who alone, of all foreigners, has detected, in its full significance, that the motive power, the cohering force, the ultimate religion of that strange composite known as “The American,” is Individual Will. Leaving the ultra-religious element out of the question, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the man, the... Read More

To STEPHEN FRANKLIN It was at Governor Alvarado's house in Monterey that Chonita first knew of Diego Estenega. I had told him much of her, but had never cared to mention the name of Estenega in the presence of an Iturbi y Moncada. Chonita came to Monterey to stand godmother to the child of Alvarado... Read More

When Crosby Suydam died and left exactly enough money to bury himself, his widow returned to New York, and, taking her two little girls by the hand, presented herself at the old Suydam mansion on Second Avenue. “You must either take care of us or see us go to the poor-house,” she said to her... Read More

Dedicated to Muriel Atherton Constantinople; the month of August; the early days of the century. It was the hour of the city's most perfect beauty. The sun was setting, and flung a mellowing glow over the great golden domes and minarets of the mosques, the bazaars glittering with trifles and precious with elements of Oriental... Read More