"One thing you can count on out here. We celebrate everything that can be celebrated, and the beauty of a lot of our good times is that they have a way of just breaking loose instead of being cooked-up in advance. It has often happened that on Christmas Eve some great singer or musician would appear in the streets and sing or play for the crowds. A hundred thousand people heard Tetrazzini when she did that four years ago. Bispham and a lot of other big singers have done the same thing, and three years ago, on Christmas Eve, Kubelik played for the crowds in the streets. Somehow I think that musicians and artists of all kinds have a warm feeling for San Francisco, and want to show us that they have." There can be no doubt that that is true. Many artists have inhabited San Francisco, and the city has always been beloved by them; especially, it sometimes seems, by the writing group. Mark Twain records that on his arrival he "fell in love with the most cordial and sociable city in the Union," and countless other authors, from Stevenson down, have paid their tribute. As might be expected of a country so palpitantly beautiful and alive, California has produced many artists in literature and the other branches, and has developed many others who, having had the misfortune to be born elsewhere, possessed, at least, the good judgment to move to California while still in the formative period. Sitting around a table in a café, one night, with a painter, a novelist and a newspaper man, I set them all to making lists, from memory, of persons following the arts, who may be classified as Californians by birth or long residence. The four most prominent painters listed were Arthur F. Mathews, Charles Rollo Peters, Charles J. Dickman and Francis McComas, all of them men standing very high in American art. Among sculptors were mentioned Robert Aitken, Arthur Putnam, Haig Patigian and Douglas Tilden. Of writers there is a deluge. Besides Mark Twain and Stevenson, the names of Bret Harte, Frank Norris, and Joaquin Miller are, of course, historic in connection with the State. Among living writers born in California were listed Gertrude Atherton, Jack London, Lloyd Osbourne, Austin Strong, Ernest Peixotto and Kathleen Norris; while among those born elsewhere who have migrated to California, were set down the names of Harry Leon Wilson, Stewart Edward White, James Hopper, Mary Austin, Grace MacGowan Cooke, Alice MacGowan, Rufus Steele and Bertha Runkle. Still another group of writers who do not now reside in California are, nevertheless, associated with the State because of having lived there in the past. Among these are Wallace and Will Irwin, Gelett Burgess, Eleanor Gates, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Edwin Markham, George Sterling, Richard Tully, Jack Hines and Arno Dosch.