While the State is completing the trust with reference to the material it already has on hand, the all-destroying march of Time still goes swiftly on, however. Manuscripts in foreign lands are fading and being lost, parchments are becoming moth-eaten or mildewed, whole archives without duplicate are at the mercy of a mob, or a revolution, or a conflagration, and a generation of men and women still alive are quickly passing away, carrying with them an "unsung Iliad" of the Sierras and the plains. In the presence of these facts, we should not stand idle. One great fraternal organization has already done, and is still loyally doing, more than its share. In the great work of endowing fellowships in Pacific Coast history at Berkeley there is room enough for all. Here is an opportunity for private munificence. A fine civism will not find a more pressing necessity, or a more splendid opportunity. An endowment of $100,000 invested in five per cent bonds will yield an annual fellowship fund of $5,000. A citizen looking for an opportunity to do something worth while could find few worthier objects. The fruit of such an endowment may not be as enduring as a noble campanile, or an incomparable Greek theater, yet, in a sense, it will be more lasting than either, for facts become history, and history survives, when campaniles fall and Greek theaters are ground to powder. It may be that we have not realized that, as it took conscious effort to create the history of the Pacific Coast, it will take conscious effort to see that it is recorded and given its proper place in the history of the country at large. If we have not understood this fact, the recital of the activities of historical societies and other agencies in the East should admonish us that it is time, it has long been time, for us to be up and doing. The record of the history that is now in the making will take care of itself, and the machinery is at hand for its preservation. If we shall become the center of a new culture, be assured that it will be its own press-agent. If we shall see grow into fruition a new music among the redwoods of our Bohemian Grove, there are signs that the world will not be kept ignorant of its origin. Literature reflecting local color will survive as the historic basis for it is known and made secure. The debt we owe to Bret Harte for "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," "The Luck of Roaring Camp," and all the individual types his genius made live again, to Helen Hunt Jackson for her immortal "Ramona," to Charles Fletcher Lummis for his faithful chronicles of splendid pioneering and research, will only be more appreciated as our knowledge of the historic past becomes more accurate and sure.