Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-10-04
ST. LOUIS AND THE KNIGHTS.

Let us not judge st. Louis too quickly.
The charges made by the advance guard
of returning Knights TempIar are that the
st. Louis people were inhospitable, cold
and meanly and discriminatory specula-
tive, and that this has led Grand Army
men to agitate the question of revoking
the decision to hold the next National En-
campment in that city. All this may be
true, but We are 10th to believe it. As a
rule, the people of the West are warmly
h%ospitable and generous to the guest, and
in a remarkably liberal degree. We are
inclined to believe that our Californians
went East with too exalted ideas of what
entertainment" is. They may have
forgotten that the free and perfectly care
less use Of money in entertaining that
obtains in California, is not paralleled any
where in the more economic East. The
thrift of Eastern people is due to their
economic habits. They see neither obliga-
ton nor virtue in lavish outpouring of
money to entertain-that is to say, our ex-
eessively enthusiastic methods look to
them like outrageous extravaganza. In a
sense they may be right, but we are con-
tent with our system for all that. 1t is
true that we have not yet come down to
the level of the economic East, though we
have approached it, for something of the
good old Pioneer era liberality attaches to
us as yet, and we are not sure that it is an
evil by any means. When we compare our
methods with those of the East, we are apt
to consider theirs niggardly, when the fact
must be that they are up to a fine standard.
1t is certainly true that Eastern people
consider ours e%xtravagant; but if so, they
serve our taste. During the recent vista
ton of the Grand Army to Sacramento it
was the common remark of Eastern guests
that they had never heard of or expert
enced such lavish hospitality as California
dispensed. They were very loud and
warm in these expressions. What we then
thought to be fattery, or the extravagant
compliment of the pleased guest, may,
after all, have been simple and unexag-
gerated truth. 1t may be that to the vision
of our Californians at st. Louis the spec
tacular display was poor, but only by con-
trast, and that it was in reality up to a
very high standard that to their judg-
ment the enthusiasm of the hosts was cold
only by contrast with the exuberant
manifestations of concern, and the unpar-
alieled bop%nteousness with which wediued
and wined and feted our recent guests
We are perfectly willing for the Eastern
people to write us down extrayagant. That
is a matter that concerns us only. We
trust that no cold economy will chill us, as
hosts, until we have won a million more Of
our Eastern friends to come and dwell with
us. But this expression they must moi
construe as confession Of selfish motive
The truth is, Californians have earned the
reputation Of doing things on the grand
in entertaining, and it is due to sincerity
of the hosts. The time will come, O
course, when more economic methods vii
prevail, but thus far we have not harmed
ourselves.
So far as St. Louis is concerned, the
complaints of her GOODNESS and narrownes:
should be received with reservations until
we hear more of the matter, and receive
also the responsive defense of the st. LOUIS
people to the unpleasant charges made
against them.