The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-06-17

1 throne or Peter. IL made men realize
 the sense of brotherhood. It created a
 religion of the here and now, with a | remedy for want. a curb for human greed.
 The book was Progress and Poverty" The man was Henry George-the great
 est social scientist since Adam Smith,
 the ultimate perfection of antithesis to
 Nicolo Machiavelli.
 In Frisco uprose the Argonaut, the
 eountry's greatest weekly newspaper.
 Its editor was another Voltaire-F'rank
 Pixley. His cry was "crush the in-
 famy"-the Catholic church-and so
 splendid and multifarlously expressive
 was his hatred that even the Catholics 1 read 1t for its style.
 For Frisco had the aesthetic atmos- 1 phere. It was another Florence. The | urge of poetry was in the air. Today the | author who came from Frisco is omni- present. Markham of '"rhe Man With
 the Hoe" is claimed by Frisco. Frank | Norris of "The Pit" hourished in the
 town of horrors and magnifcences. Ger l trude Atherton first moralized there or thereabouts. Geett Burgess here con-
 ceived "The Purple Cow" and then an odd little man named Doxey issued | "The Lark" sui generis. an epoch mak- | ing publication that will live in history | with Frazer's Magazine. with the Anti | Jacobn, with the Yellow Book. Am | prose Bieree, the most vitriolic of Ameri- | can writers, there wrote tales that for
 terrors in artistic imagination challenged l the supremacy of Poe. The Overland 1 Monthly was Frisco enterprise that l lives today. Joaquin Miller went red | shirted to London and told them in his . Songs of the Sierras" of what would l come to be in the city that, serene in- 1 different of fate as Harte said, "sitteth l at the Western Gate"
 ' In Frisco the greatest modern roman l ticist, Robert Louis Stevenson, hungered
 and wrote one line immortal-"it was a | clear. cold night of stars'-in "The | Silverado Squatters." In Frisco they | erected the first monument to the creator
 of Prince Florizel of Bohemia. John Sil- l yer. and the reincarnation of Francois l Villon
 l Hundreds of our later stages best act
 ors came from Frisco, where the theatre | rose early and flourished exotically.
 Lotta came from Frisco and became our | first ingenu. It's early stock companies | vitalized our stage.
 1 In Frisco Kiplng's manuscripts were turned down by editors. and he avenged | himself somewhat on the town, though
 before he closed his depreciation he had | to be little less than just to the place, if | for no other reason than that had there l been no Bret Harte and "'rhe Luck of | Roaring Camp" and Hiss" and Ten | nessee's Pardner," there had been no
 Soldiers Three" perhaps no Kim" | and eke no "Recessional'
 In Frisco William Keith had his | studio-Keith who was something of | the mastery of dark color of Diaz- | Keith, undoubtedly one of the greatest of American artists Artists, poets. novel, | ists, scientists. teachers lent the popula- | ton a tone of deVil-may-care.
 l This town of less than half our popula- | ton had more and better daily papers | than St. Louis. It sent boy to New l York to challenge the supremacy of Pu- 1 litzer journalism with les taches jaunes, and to frighten wall street with a red l flag having just a touch of yellow, and to | compel by sheer audacity attention to l his intention to be president-Mr. Will l liam Randolph Hearst.
 1 Frisco was worldwide known next to | New York and Chicago, and now it has | won the worlds interest by a calamity l rivalng that which was Chicago's first l claim on fame. A 'Frisco-built battle | ship. the Oregon, made a world wonder ing run around the Horn to Santiago
 and into the fight that broke Spain's | power on this hemisphere forever.
 Frisco was loved by It's citizens as no city Is loved in this land. save, possibly 1 New York. It was a city that cared for l the beautiful that took ideas It had | the only Bohemian club in the world in | which Bohemianism was fumigated of its disreputablity, and stood for the true as | distinct from the perverted twadiness of Murger's Vie de Boheme." It supported at least four excellent weekly papers. the | Argonaut, the Newsletter. Town Talk. James H. Barrys Star-periodcals indi- | vidual, hgh-class, cosmopolitan. George | Stirling wrote there the best book of verse of the last four years, "The Testi- mony of the Suns" and from Frisco | Jack London, with his gospel of beauty ! in brutality captured mems imaginations and awoke in their hearts echoes of 'The | Call of the Wld' and the snarlings of 'rhe Sea Wolf" The literary center of | Frisco boasted of the finest book store | in the country west of New York. and the | output of Paul Elder X Company. publish CTS, was almost a new revelation in some aspects of the art preservatiye.
 | Life was lived in Frisco. It was a l little of Paris, of Rome. of Florence. of | Pekin. It was a town of temperament l in which Righteousness blent with d na- tive beauty sense. Winds of the sea came in and met with winds of the desert. The fog, mostly pearl-grey but | often sun-tinged to opaline hung over the town and gave 1t rare values to the esuriently artistic eye. Naval officers brought there as wives and daughters of An Fong Hawaii's Chinese millionaire. Sport f1ourshed in all its forms, square | and vertiginous The climate made for | love e-making. The wines and fruits and l! the wonderful sunsets and the blend of odors of east and west made life a picture, a poem. The world turned to Frisco and California as 1t turned in earlier ages to Rome and Florence and
 Italy There the singer, the sculptor. the painter, the novelist. sought the sky and air that freshened heart and fecun- dated mind. It chained the sensitive of soul, and 1t invited the merely sensual lovers of luxury. Always and ever about one was the conjugating of the verb "enjoy"-not always conjugally
 It was opulent and of a mighty ori- ency of brightness, but with darkness 10 heighten the picture It's sfums were the most impenetrable ''n all the lands of christendie." It's crimes surpassed in places. Its citizens gave to the city
 more gracefully than other citizens of other towns gave to them. An ignorant
 miner, Lick. gave the city a great miners
 hotel and to the state the worlds finest
 observatory. It was gladdened with
 many fountains and parks. It was a city which the rich decorated and loved
 and inconceivably disgraced in the early
 orgies but never wholly ruled Its king was the head of a seamens union An drew Furuseth. and union labor con afa