Los Angeles herald., 1907-03-24
WHY GENIUS SEEKS
sunny CALIFORNIA
bob" BURDETTE ANSWERS
THE QUESTION
"The Sugar Cask" Is His Reason in
Accounting for the Presence
Of Men of Art and
Letters

If it is true, as Robert Louis Steven
son opines, that ut is better to have
travelled than to have arrived" why Is
1t so many men Of power and achieve
ment men who have travelled and are
still travelling, find their place of abid-
ing and are content to have arrived
when they reach the City of the Angels?
Year by year there is a continual in
crease in the influx of men of genius
and creative power into Los Angeles,
and all seem to find it, not "loftus
eaters paradise" but a land of work
and achievement. 1t is indeed land
of dreams, and yet of work-a-day
dreams, a cline that is innocuous and
yet inspiring. AS Bob ]. Burdette says,
a "land of strenuous content" What
could be more apt? This happy phrase
is perhaps the key to the solution of
the coming year by year of men who
dream and work at the same time.
Mr.. Burdette used the expression
when The Herald asked him about it
yesterday.
What is there in this land Of strenu-
Gus content that attracts literary men?"
he said. "Well, what is there in a
sugar cask that attracts flies? Some
thing they like, I reckon. Something
they can't find anywhere else. An at
mosphere that is somehow congenial to
every man, from the hustling real estate
boomer and the optimistic business
man, dreaming of skyscrapers that
would pierce the clouds, save that there
are no CLOUDS, to the real dreamer who
gazes at the mountains or sea, trying
to think of word; or the artist who
tmmortallzes nature by putting her on
the canvas as she ought to be. Some
how they all come here, and although
their ambitions and purposes and activ-
tiles are as far apart as morning and
night, they all agree that this is the
best place or earth for their special
work and definite plans. 1t must be
the sugar cask. 1 don't know what
else.
Attracts Flies
"That, you know, attracts great
swarms of fiies-different kinds of flies.
Great booming blue bottles; and the
great human irritator, the common fly
of commerce; green-headed flies; the
well known 'hoss fly'-sometimes incor-
rectly called horsefly, useless torment
ing and busy as all flies and many tor
menting and worthless people always
are. And bees, busy little honey bees
who hasten to store their cell so that
men may sell their store; 'burly, doz-
ing, bumblebees,' called by ignorant
people humble bees who make more
strife than honey, like some other busy
people; all sorts of bees.
And wasps, carrying concealed
poniards on their persons, with no more
sense or quality of sweetness than a
politician has of mercy; jumping the
bees and flies locations, no one hinder
ing. And yellow jackets, with ready
raZors even for the wasps, and with
automatic tempers on the hair trigger;
they, too, are like some people; the
more sugar you feed them the more
vitriol they secrete. And boys, whose
human instincts attract them to any
chance of getting sugar, killing flies,
and fighting bees.
"The idle and the busy; the vicious
and the useful; the loafer and the
worker; the commonplace and the pic
turesque; the fly, the bee the wasp
and the human-you find them all
swarming around the sugar. cask.
Same way in California.
"Oh! You wanted me to say what l
thought there was especially attractive
in California to the artist and the
literary man? Well, 1 don't, know how
to say 1t. in exact and correct phrase
and thought. The sugar cask, L
reckon.
For artists and literary men are
the crowds swarm. They may sigh, in
beautiful vision and melodious numbers
for a lodge in some vast Wilderness
but just about the time you think you
miss them you meet them at the county
fair. Or the worlds universal exposi-
ton, which is the same thing, magni-
fled a few diameters. They come here
for the picturesque and the romantic
and the indispensable commonplace,
without which nothing is of human in.
terest. They come because all the
world is represented here, and they can
get local color for any story that
haunts the brain. They come because
so much Of human interest centers
here; so much of human life comes and
goes through these valleys of dreams
and duties, ambitions and purposes.
They come to gaze upon the man-and-
nature panorama Incidentally to paint
It or tell about 1t, and possibly to find
a market for the wares of genius. Why
do they come and why do they stay?
Indeed, don't know exactly why. The
sugar cask 1 reckon"