The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-06-02
You speak. TO me of sunny skies,
OF orange grove and flowers,
OF winds that make soft melodies
Midst leaf. and vine, and bowers.

opment, this year, the Italian refrain O.
my girlhood, which used to be favoritt
song with me, came back in all of it.
melodious realization for America as
looked upon the marvellous transforms
ton from bud and blossom in my first triI
through your Hesperides, but a short time
since, into the rapidly ripening fruit as
journeyed back to San Francisco a few
days ago.
When your orchards and fields were al
abloom with the pink and white blossoms
and the tasseled grain which foretold the
garnered store of full fruition that was tc
follow soon in the harvest home l jour
neyed through the bewildering maze Of
that rich horoscope of nature that might
see with mine own eyes and realize with
my own appreciation the italian skies and
balmy air of California and witness the
kaleidoscope possibilities of its climate in
transforming bud and blossom and ripening
grain into the harvest, Ike unto the Ar
cadian tales of old.
With as sudden Transformation, it
seemed to me, as the rub of the Aladdin
lamp, when I came back, presto! the
great wealth of coloring of miles upon
miles of trees and pregnant grain were
gone, and in their stead the branches bent
with the ripe red cherry, the boughs were
laden with the apricot, peach, plum, pear,
peeping out from the deep green leaves,
with suggestive hues of toothsome festival
and feast, while the russell oat field and the
ripening wheat were garnered into huge
stacks that meant wealth of appetite and
prosaic bread, where but yesterday stood
the poetic symbolism, in pink and white
symphony, of natures stores for man.
Here. too, l encountered the Fiesta, 1"
with youthful queens sitting on symbolic
miniature thrones, posing as sovereigns
for the nonce, that all might crown them
for the day with the lovely tiara of ma
lures Joint product of the fruits, the
wealth of indescribable flowers and roses.
Coming out of this fairyland, with the
prosaic life of the everyday grind and
at the Woman's Congress, which was to
set the harmony , of the spheres of
man and woman, like perfect
music unto noble words" / asked
of the future: what of the California
girl, under such wonderful conditions of
earth and air and sky? VIII she, like the
Greek maiden of old, whose life we are
Just beginning to apprehend through
honest translation of justice-loving men,
bring to her day and generation an ex-
uberant health, grace, beauty and har-
mony of body and mind that will impress
for all time and coming generations of free
men and women the possibilities of the
human race, as did the Homeric women in
the sunny isle of Greece?"
Professor Donaldson has recently trans
lated for US the life of the Greek maiden at
home and abroad, which tells of the most
beautiful leal-hearted girls, who developed
into the wondrouS matrons, 1mpresSing
with her gifts and graces the nation which
to-day stands as a living illustration for
q Torfoat fura of fha hmm
divine attaining that standard, as Pro-
lessor Donaldson shows, by the exuberant
health of its women and the complete free
dom in home and state of the relations of
both man and woman
And herein lies the success or failure of
your famed cline in the impress of its
women upon both physical and mental
progress. 1t will be in vain that Califor-
MIA sends her fruits and flowers abroad,
holds her festas and carnivals of roses and
puts a pretty maiden on a triumphant
throne of fading blossoms if, with all these
advantages, the race of men and women do
not show forth a steady development of
Drawn and brain and muscle, a type devel-
oped under these most rare conditions that
will impress the future with the possibili-
ties of the race.
We held but recently quatro-centen-
NAL celebration on the shores of Lake
Michigan to show forth the progress of the
arts. SCltuCSo anu lANclitlOu uuQbI lOuT
hundred years of progress and develop
ment.
Nothing filed me with greater apprehen-
sion as, day by day for the six months of
that wondrous display, 1 wandered in and
out of the buildings and about the grounds
and looked upon the mass of Americans
that were there gathered.
/ have never seen such conglomerate
crowd of weaklings as was there exhibited.
Rarely beautiful face or figure of woman,
seldom an athletic, magnificent specimen
of mani
If wanted to look upon the human
form divine. developed into massive pro-
portions as to men, and graceful natural
coloring and poise for women, had to
wend my way into the South Sea islanders
weird huts. That commentary on this Re-
public was further emphasized by these
men and women of noble proportions sing
ing in melancholy dirge together my
Country, IT'S of Thee"
And when, the other night, the Woman's
Congress INDUCED in the only music it
had perpetrated during the session by
joining in an English woman's challenge
TO MARBLE "God Save the Queen" could
but feel that If 400 years of progress in
free nation exhibited but lot of knock
kneed, spindle-shanked, square-toed and
feeble muscled men, as the great majority
were IN evidence at our Chicago fair, and
that barbarians from the South Sea were
the solitary monuments of physical Prov
ess to the human race, then our civiliza-
ton was failure, and the heathen's mel
ancholy singing of our National hymn
was fitting symbol of the dying Republic
which can illustrate development of art
and science and irrigation, but not men.
And more than this, if after woman s
congresses have been inaugurated at this
centennial and the wave of emulation has
reached your shores to-day in the recent
session in your midst, a foreigner, whose
bankipg-house now runs the treasury of
the United States, can strike the keynote
for the music of the California girl-then
National patriotism is dead, republican
ism counts for naught, and we have only
to await in abiect servitude the hour when
history shall write for us, 'Mene tekel
upharsin."
Still further: The Oakland branch of
the Woman's Congress gathered yesterday
in the First Unitarian Church for the final
meeting of the session. 1t was. the eve of
the great National peace-offering to the
names of departed patriots-Decoration
day. The starry flag, that emblem of
liberty for the human race, was to be car
ried aloft on the morrow by tens of thou
sands of men, women and children all over
the land. This flag Of our Union was the
creation of the brain and hand of woman
Tnl-s II L.