Remember that he is instinctively an athlete and that he has never
dissipated his magnificent strength in fighting weather. If he is a
little - mind you, I say only a little - inclined to use that strength
on more entertaining dissipation, he is as likely to restore the balance
by much physical exercise.
There I go again! Enormous! Superb! Splendid! Spacious! You see how
impossible it is to keep your vocabulary down when California is your
subject. Another moment and I shall be saying more unique.
Remember that all his life he has gazed on beauty - beauty tragic and
haunting, beauty gorgeous and gay. Remember he is accustomed to enormous
sizes; superb heights; splendid distances; spacious vistas. That
California does not produce an annual crop of megalo-maniacs is the best
argument I know for the superiority of heredity over environment.
Remember, too, that all his life the Native Son has soaked in an art
atmosphere potentially as strong and individual as ancient Greece or
renaisance Italy. The dazzling country side, the sulphitic brew of
races, the cosmopolitan "city" have taken care of that. That art-spirit
accounts for such minor California phenomena as photography raised to
unequalled art levels and shops whose simple beautiful interiors
resemble the private galleries of art collectors; it accounts for such
major phenomena as the Stevenson monument, the "Lark", the annual Grove
Play of the Bohemian Club, and the Exposition of 1915.
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