The record-union., 1892-05-30
OUR LATE VISITORS.

1AS SEVERAL uuHureQ Eastern news
paper proprietors who were here
last week came at our invitation. We
besought them to visit California that
the East might gain better knowledge of
this part Of the national domain. They
came from forty-one of the States and
Territories. They are proprietors and
editors of journals long established, of
good repute and rejecting the settled
civilization, the established social and
business conditions in nearly five hun
dred cities and towns of the great East.
They were not drinking, registering
company, but intelligent, sober and
thoughtful people of settled habits and
modest means. Yet they were by no
means radical in temperance, niggardly in
expenditure or in any way parsimonious.
S4O0 a head aside from the loss of
months labor in their vocations. From
| observation studiously made in travelling
with them for week and seeing and
communing with them under meteoro-
| logical conditions that were vexatious,
trying and exhausting, we are prepared
to say that they were gentlemanly.
| courteous, patient, iberal-handed and
liberal-minded, and thoroughly intelli-
gent. They asked for nothing; they did
not ask to be feasted or feted; they ac-
cepted such hospitality as was extended
to them in the spirit in which it was
| rendered They did not grumble nor
complain, and were too well bred to ex-
press any thought that might have been
embarrassing to their hosts, even if they
entertained any ideas adverse to US,
which we do not think they did-but
quite to the contrary.
Comments INDUCED in by certain in
tiuences to the discredIt of these visitors
are wholly unjustifiable; are evidence
of vulgar tastes, and do not CORE
spond with the truth. Our guests
were well-behaved, intelligent, observ-
ant, well-balanced people, and fairly and
truthfully represent the civilization of
the great East of our common country,
If California assumption of superiority
finds in them that which does not COM
port with our improvidence and ideas of
| social enjoyment, it is the more to our
discredit, and exposes US to the criticism
| that we are not level with our Eastern
| brethren in social character. But this
would be unjust to California, for, as a
matter of fact, the criticisms referred to
do not reflect public sentiment nor COM
port with the truth.
1t is simply absurd to assume that so
large body of people, owning and en-
gagged upon the leading rural and city
| press of most of the States and Terrific
ries for the most part all their manhood
! lives, respected in their communities and
occupying good social and financial DO
sitions there, are not representative. 1t
is to the discredit of California, wherever
any of its citizens assume for the social
conditions of this State such supe-
riority as would place our Eastern breth-
rem below high standard.
Our visitors came, we repeat, at our in
vitation, they behaved themselves as
ladies and gentlemen; they did not riot in
saloons or revel upon the highways; they
spent their money freely for what their
tastes inclined them to; their verdict on
California we can afford to wait for. Ger
tainly if California bodies going East are
as fairly representative, as decently or
dered, and as intelligent as were our late
visitors, we will have reason to be proud
of our social conditions and their results.