Thus California remains something of a mystery. The whole United States, of course, has been going downhill since the beginning of the century, but why should one State go so much faster than the others? Is the climate to blame? Hardly. The climate of San Francisco is thoroughly un-Californian, and yet San Francisco is almost as dead as Los Angeles. It was there, indeed, that that California masterpiece, the Mooney case, was staged; it was here that the cops made three efforts to convict poor Fatty Arbuckle of murder in the first-degree; it was there that the late Dr. Abrams launched a quackery that went Mother Eddy one better. San Francisco, once the home of Mark Twain and Bret Harte, is now ravaged by Prohibition enforcement officers. But if the climate is not to blame, then what is? Why should a great State, lovely physically and of romantic history, so violently renounce all sense and decency? What has got into it? God alone knows! 9 _Honor in America_ Some time ago I enjoyed the distinguished honor of entertaining an American university professor in my house. The fellow had a resilient gullet, and in the course of the evening we got down a quart of Scotch. Made expansive by the liquor, he told me this story: A short while before, at his university, one of the professors gave a booze party for a group of colleagues, including the president of the institution. It was warm weather, and they sat on the veranda, guzzling moonshine and ginger-ale. There was so much chatter that they didn’t hear a student coming up the path. Suddenly he was on them, and they almost fainted.... At this point I asked why they were alarmed. “Well,” said my visitor, “suppose the student had turned out to be a Christian? He would have blabbed, and then our host would have lost his chair. The president would have been forced to cashier him.” “But the president,” I argued, “was a guest in the man’s house. How could he have dismissed him?” “What else would there have been for him to do?” asked the professor. “Resign at once,” I replied. “Wasn’t he under the obligations of a guest? Wasn’t he _particeps criminis_? How could he separate himself from his host? How could he sit as judge upon his host, even if only formally?” But the professor couldn’t see the point. I began to fear that he was in his cups, but it soon appeared that he was quite clear. We argued for half an hour: he was still unable to see the point. The duty of a president to enforce an unwilling and dishonest obedience to an absurd law--this duty was superior to his duty as a guest, _i. e._, it was superior to his obligation as a man of honor! We passed on to another point. “What of the student?” I asked. “I take it that he turned out to be a gentleman. Suppose he had been a Christian? Suppose he had blabbed? What would the other boys have done to him?” The professor stared at me blankly. “Nothing,” he said at length. “After all, we _were_ boozing.”