The tiny monument to Stevenson, tucked away in a corner soaked with
romantic memories - Portsmouth Square - compares favorably with the
charming memorials to the French dead. It is a thing of beautiful
proportions. A little stone column supports a bronze ship, its sails
bellying robustly to the whip of the Pacific winds. The inscription - a
well known quotation from the author - is topped simply by "To remember
Robert Louis Stevenson."
Perhaps you will object that some of these are not Native Sons. But
hush! Californians consider anybody who has stayed five minutes in the
State - a real Californian. And believe us, Reader, by that time most of
them have become not Californians but Californiacs.
The "Lark" is perhaps the most delicious bit of literary fooling that
this country has ever produced. It raised its blythe song at the Golden
Gate, but it was heard across a whole continent. For two years, Gelett
Burgess, Bruce Porter, Porter Garnett, Willis Polk, Ernest Peixotto, and
Florence Lundborg performed in it all the artistic antics that their
youth, their originality, their high spirits suggested. Professor
Norton, speaking to a class at Harvard University, and that the two
literary events of the decade between 1890 and 1900 were the fiction of
the young Kipling and the verse that appeared in the " Lark.
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