Even after John Brown took the pledge in Ohio, he accommodated a neighbor by carrying two jugs of whisky to refresh a crowd at a barn raising. The road was uphill and the day was hot. The thirsty men craved the liquor. The spiritual man revolted. He smashed the jugs on the nearest rock, and repaid his neighbor the two dollars invested. Soakers mourned about that rock and vainly smacked their lips at the smell of wasted liquor. Naturally, such a village as Saratoga finds way to express itself. From many of its summits the greater portion of Santa Clara County's ninety billions of prune blossoms can be seen. For a flowering and fragrant fortnight, the most wonderful horticultural sight man and angels see in this blossoming Santa Clara Valley. Ten happy years the people of the village have united to celebrate the perfection of the bloom by a "Blossom Day." The Southern Pacific Company lends cordial and generous aid. On no other day, save the great May Day of Los Gatos, has the Interurban Electric Railroad carried so many rejoicing excursionists. Thousands-as many as ten thousands-crowd the village street and camp under nature's The Meteor, Alum Rock. H. Bercovitch residence, Naglee Park San Jose. blossom canopies. Artificial flowers and arches? Not any-the flowers of God-the arches of heaven smiling over the fruitful orchards of grateful men. Plough teams bring bring great family loads. Hundreds of automobiles whirr through village streets. The home of Stanford's tally-ho is joyous. A Santa Clara girl is not ideally courted until she has passed under the snowy arches of Glen Una or Sorosis. Congress Springs' unsurpassed soda flows freely. Children race and swing. Balloons fly. Athletes perspire. College rooters cheer their champions. Orators charm the crowd. Readers and singers bring their best. It is a unique and local pre-Thanksgiving service rooted deep in human hearts. Sincere as the Passion Play at Oberammergau. Why? Great drouths did not kill our orchards as we feared, and we thank God! Long may "Blossom Day" record the gratitude of our people. A London lady who was guest at our first festival enthusiastically said it repaid her for her journey from England. The Eastern tourist who has not ridden with one of our intelligent ranchmen in the procession up the hillside has missed one of the keenest delights of our superb coast. Home of Chas. Crothers, Naglee Park, San Jose. Is John Brown's rejoicing spirit yet abroad? Yes, "His soul is marching on.' I BY PIERRE N. BERINGER N ANOTHER page of this issue of the Overland Monthly is a short human interest story that strikes the heart. Kate Simpson Hayes has read us a lecture that is quite as forceful in its way as some of the work of the noble band of men and women who took up, in the literary circles of the United States, the task of freeing the blacks of the South from the thrall of slavery in the sixties. There is an intollerance of race in vogue at all times in this country that seems to be in a great measure lacking in the old world. In this enlightened land, an Alexander Dumas were an impossibility. There have been men of the colored race just as great as he born on the American continent, and men such as Booker Washington have accomplished more for their race, and incidentally for the white race, than was ever done by Dumas or his brilliant son. Dumas, pere et fils, might have been in this country, but under no condition of fame as equals to the white man, in the white man's estimation. Is it because of the older civilization of the old world? As a community, we know better than any one other community that the intolerance displayed toward the Japanese (in our attitude as regards schools, in our allowing the stoning of inoffensive "boys," in the riots that almost caused a war, and in the agitations of the Exclusion League) is bigotted, stupid and expensive. We boast of our great port, and then we deliberately allow a small minority of our population, under the leadership of an ex-convict and a professional labor agitator, to effectually close it against our very best Oriental customer. We allow the world to believe that the Leaguers really represent a majority of Californians. We allow a school of race hatred to keep right on proselyting in our midst, and we do not frown down the practice. The Exclusion League has cost the people of the State of California in export and import business thousands upon thousands of dollars, and only last year an unfortunate demonstration of hoodlumism, by the League, at a time when we were being visited by a large delegation of Japanese manufacturers, cost our iron works an order (given in Chicago) that has footed up nearly three hundred thousand dollars in a very short space of time. That money would have directly benefited white artisans of San Francisco, buttheir brothers of the Exclusion League willed matters otherwise. On the 19th of this month of August, there sailed from Japan the Japanese Commercial Commissioners, in the Great Northern liner Minnesota. It was the desire of the American Committee for them to cross the ocean under the American flag, and the business men composing the commission gladly accepted the offer. It is an unfortunate thing that these commissioners go first to Seattle, but it is hoped that when they get to San Fran- . cisco their welcome will be so enthusiastic that it will make up for the time lost in sojourning in the Northwest. This is really a return visit, and it is doubtful if by any stretch of hospitality any one could approach the welcome extended the Americans who visited Japan in the last chrysanthemum season. The reception should be made an official one, and as the representative and most influential magazine on the Pacific Coast, the Overland Monthly urges on our Government, civic and State officials, the necessity of treating the coming of these representative men of Japan to our shores as something more than an informal affair. The Overland Monthly has taken the pains to secure the views of men of note in America on this subject. Mr. James J. Hill, of the Great Northern Railroad, says: "**the cultivation and the maintenance of the friendship of the Japanese is worthy of the best thought of the American people. They are a wonderful people and their advancement among the nations of the world will be, in all probability, as great if not greater in the next thirty year as it has been in the past thirty years." is arranging to make a good impression on California should do all she can to im- The Japanese Government has just issued a circular, and it has been reprinted in English by the local consul, which goes to show what a decrease in the Japanese the population in one year has been. There are to-day in the neighborhood of six thousand less Japanese on the Pacific Coast than at this time one year ago. In every possible way the Japanese Government is essaying to meet us more than half way, and its latest action, in the removal of the subsidy to deep sea fishers, will effectually stop the raiding of the seal rookeries of the Bering seas. Japan is only too glad to turn the flood of its migratory labor toward Manchuria, Korea and Formosa. It is attempting to conquer Asia for the Asians, and it is laboring on a gigantic and comprehensive scale. It is not worried over affairs in Hawaii or in the United States, other than insisting further that every provision of the treaty now in force be observed. Mr. Burns, President of the New York Central Railroad Company, said that: said that *** it would be better, regardless of all commercial considerations, to urge the Japanese to come, for 'in his judgment' it, would be better for us to spend money in the entertainment of the Japanese Commissioners that they may see the true sentiments of the American people toward them than in the burning of coal to send our great war vessels across the Pacific." Mr. Harriman is quoted as follows: "Our road will do its full share, in conjunction with the other roads, in helping in the entertainment." The Manufacturers' Club of Philadelphia has extended the Japanese a cordial welcome and will entertain the commissioners in Philadelphia while the Pennsylvania Railroad will engage to join other roads in transporting and in arranging with other roads for the transportation of the nation's guests. Every large Eastern manufacturing and shipping center, mindful of future trade, In every controversy it has always borne in mind that, no matter what our present views, it was America that has made modern Japan a possibility among the nations of the world. The adage that nations are ungrateful is a true one, but it does not apply as regards Japan. Japan is not only grateful, but it is determined. that there shall be no just cause of complaint on our part. Are we as considerate in our treatment of Japan? Let us give the Commissioners a rousing reception. 1 The public is in debt to the men who have made the publication of the latest of Harold Bell Wright's books possible. They are the men who are the energy and the force back of the Book Supply Company of Chicago. Mr. E. W. Reynolds is the President of this company, and he is ably assisted by L. N. Black, the Treasurer, and Mr. McPherson Reynolds, vice-president and secretary. These men are looming up big in the book publishing busi ness. When "That Printer of Udell's" was published it was the wonder among publishers that some one of the "big fellows" had not secured this really great work. Then, when the work took like wild-fire and sold far beyond the wildest expectations of writer or publisher, the "big fellows" began to wonder who this man from Kansas was who had settled down in Porkopolis and stirred up such a row in the publishing business. Literary Indiana sat up and took notice, and the driedin-the-rut men in New York pushed up their glasses and looked Westward. Reynolds had come from some unknown place into Chicago, and had given evidence of wonderful push and energy. The man is the embodiment of the spirit of the West. Harold Bell Wright was a find for these men, and Harold Bell Wright justified his discovery by writing things that will live. "The Shepherd of the Hills" followed the first success, and now we have a new and a better book than either of these in "The Calling of Dan Matthews." The book reviewer does not feel like making an extended critique of this work. He is letting it ooze into his system. The book itself is strong. It tells a story which, simply for the telling, is telling, is worth while. "The Calling of Dan Mat thews" is a sermon, and yet it in no manner lectures the reader, and it does not convey to him the fact that he is being hectored as to his conduct, but the fact remains that the book points out that modern American society is afflicted with a disease, in some way or other, affecting every citizen of the great Republic; a disease that unless it is stemmed, stopped or damned up to prevent its overflowing, overcoming energy, will overthrow every obstacle and bring on anarchy or an autocracy that will pale into insignificance as compared with that of Nero. The author doesn't say this at all. It is a conclusion drawn by the reviewer, who feels in a mind to soliloquize to-day, and it is just barely possible that, given other temperament and other surroundings, the reader will come to a vastly different opinion, after reading "The Calling of Dan Matthews." To the reviewer, the reading has been hugely enjoyable, and, when it is remembered that the reviewer is a crabbed critical cuss, the above is praise indeed. "The Woman and the Sword" is a wellwritten, well thought out novel, of the old yellow-cover style, the kind we used to go and hide behind the barn and read until our eyes "bugged" out. It is by Rupert Lorraine, which is, in its way, quite a good name for such an author of such a book. To the reader who is familiar with the run of the historical novels of the day, this volume throws a side light on the events occurring outside the ultra civilized capitals of Europe in the days of the great Richelieu. It gives an idea of the buccaneering swashbuckler captains who hired their services to the always warring princes of little kingdoms and dukedoms of Europe buzzing around the outside of |