Most people in first visiting California are obsessed with the flowers, the abundant callas, the monstrous roses, the giant geraniums. But I never ceased to wonder at the beauty of the trees. And remember, I have not as yet seen what they call the "big" trees. Yes, California is quite as beautiful as her poets insist and her painters prove. It turns everybody who goes there into a poet, at least temporarily. Babes lisp in numbers and those of the native population who don't actually write poetry, talk it--no matter what the subject is. Take the case of Sam Berger. Sam Berger--I will explain for the benefit of my women readers--was first a distinguished amateur heavyweight boxer who later became sparring partner for Bob Fitzimmons and manager to Jim Jeffries. In an interview on the subject of boxing, Mr. Berger said, "Boxing is an art--just as much so as music. To excel in it you must have a conception of time, of balance, of distance. The man who attempts to box without such a conception is like a person who tries to be a musician without having an ear for music." Is it not evident from this that Mr. Berger would have become a poet if a more valiant art had not claimed him? In that ideal future state in which all the world-parts are assembled and perfectly coordinated into one vast self-governing machine, I hope that California will be turned into a great international reservation, given over entirely to poets, lovers and honeymoon couples. It is too beautiful to waste on mere bromidic residential or business interests. So much for the State of California. I confess with shame that that is all I know about it, although I reiterate that that ignorance is not my fault. So now for San Francisco. San Francisco! San Francisco! Many people do not realize that San Francisco tips a peninsula projecting west and north from the coast of California. Between that peninsula and the mainland lies a blue arm of the blue San Francisco bay. So that when you have bisected the continent and come to what appears to be the edge of the western world, you must take a ferry to get to the city itself.