ETC.
As I may have occasion in these pages to advance certain opinions perhaps scarcely worthy of being dignified as the expression of plural wisdom, I shall always use the first person, singular. Generally I think the average reader is not deceived by the editorial plural. We do not, I observe, accept objectionable doctrine any the quicker for it. On the contrary, we are very apt to say: "That's Smith—everybody knows he's incited by jealousy," or "Jones got his price for that article." Perhaps Jones did; perhaps we get our price for opposing Jones' views; but that is neither here nor there. I simply meant to say that in this department of the Overland there is nothing oracular—nothing but the expression of an individuality, generally inexact, rarely positive, and certainly never authoritative.
Yet it falls to my lot at the very outset, to answer, on behalf of 'the publishers, a few questions that have arisen in the progress of this venture. Why, for instance, is this magazine called "The Overland Monthly?" It would perhaps be easier to say why it was not called by some of the thousand other titles suggested. I might explain how "Pacific Monthly" is hackneyed, mild in suggestion, and at best but a feeble echo of the Boston "Atlantic;" how the "West," "Wide West" and "Western" are already threadbare and suggest to Eastern readers only Chicago and the Lakes; how "Occidental " and "Chrysopolis" are but cheap pedantry, and "Sunset," "Sundown," "Hesper," etc., cheaper sentiment; how "California,"—honest and direct enough—is yet too local to attract any but a small number of readers. I might prove that there was safety, at least, in the negative goodness of our present homely Anglo-Saxon title. But is there nothing more? Turn your eyes to this map made but a few years ago. Do you see this vast interior basin of the Continent, on which the boundaries of States and Territories are less distinct than the names of wandering Indian tribes; do you see this broad zone reaching from Virginia City to St. Louis, as yet only dotted by telegraph stations, whose names are familiar, but of whose locality we are profoundly ignorant? Here creeps the railroad, each day drawing the West and East closer together. Do you think, O owner of Oakland and San Francisco lots, that the vast current soon to pour along this narrow channel will be always kept within the bounds you have made for it? Will not this mighty Nilus overflow its banks and fertilize the surrounding desert? Can you ticket every passenger through to San Francisco—to Oakland—to Sacramento—even to Virginia City? Shall not the route be represented as well as the termini? And where our people travel, that is the highway of our thought. Will the trains be freighted only with merchandize, and shall we exchange nothing but goods? Will not our civilization gain by the subtle inflowing current of Eastern refinement, and shall we not, by the same channel, throw into Eastern exclusiveness something of our own breadth and liberality? And if so, what could be more appropriate for the title of a literary magazine than to call it after this broad highway?
The bear who adorns the cover may be "an ill-favored" beast whom "women cannot abide," but he is honest withal. Take him if you please as the symbol of local primitive barbarism. He is crossing the track of the Pacific Railroad, and has paused a moment to look at the coming engine of civilization and progress—which moves like a good many other engines of civilization and progress with a prodigious shrieking and puffing—and apparently recognizes his rival and his doom. And yet, leaving the symbol out, there is much about your grizzly that is pleasant. The truth should however be tested at a moment when no desire for self-preservation prejudices the observer. In his placid moments he has a stupid, good-natured, grey tranquility, like that of the hills in midsummer. I am satisfied that his unpleasant habit of scalping with his fore paw is the result of contact with the degraded aborigine, and the effect of bad example on the untutored ursine mind. Educated, he takes quite naturally to the pole, but has lost his ferocity, which is perhaps after all the most respectable thing about a barbarian. As a cub he is playful and boisterous, and I have often thought was not a bad symbol of our San Francisco climate. Look at him well, for he is passing away. Fifty years and he will be as extinct as the dodo or dinornis.
Before this Magazine reaches the hands of some of its readers the Fourth of July, 1868, will have passed. Those who have brought their eyes uninjured out of this trying patriotic ordeal will naturally look to these pages for some allusion to the day; those who are preparing to celebrate will expect a sustained rhetorical effort, containing an allusion to the American eagle more or less distinct. Rhetoric and finely turned apostrophes are good in their way, but there is something better than that. What is the finest passage in the Declaration of Independence? It is not the premises so grandly stated; it is not any one of the terrible counts of that awful indictment against his majesty George III; it is not the dogma of equal rights, but it is the concluding sentence, wherein "we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." How windy our declamation; how tawdry and insincere our most elaborate rhetoric seems, beside the simple and majestic sincerity of this statement. It is not to the elegance of the composition, nor the perfection of the pleadings, but to this pledge alone that we owe our blessed privilege of reading it to-day. No: we will not attempt an oration. We will explode the honest cracker, we will elevate the ambitious rocket, we will let off the playful serpent, and burn our fingers in other ways, but we will not, if you please, write an oration.
WE make history too rapidly in this country, and are too accustomed to changes to notice details. In the continual ebb and flow of life in San Francisco we scarce note an absence. Men go round the world before they are missed from Montgomery street. I am afraid Belisarius would hardly find a friend when he came back, and Ulysses' dog would have been impounded. In respect of the following, Mud Flat is a type of San Francisco:
RETURNED.
So you’re back from your travels, old fellow,
And you left but a twelvemonth ago ;
You’ve hobnobbed with Louis Napoleon,
Eugenie, and kissed the Pope’s toe.
By Jove, it is perfectly stunning,
Astounding—and all that, you know ;
Yes, things are about as you left them
In Mud Flat a twelvemonth ago.
The boys!—They’re all right—O, Dick Ashley,
He’s buried somewhere in the snow ;
He was lost on the Summit, last winter,
And Bob has a hard row to hoe.
You knew that he’s got the consumption?
You didn’t! Well, come, that’s a go;
I certainly wrote you at Baden,
Dear me—that was six months ago.
I got all your outlandish letters,
All stamped by some foreign P. O.
I handed, myself, to Miss Mary
That sketch of a famous chateau.
Tom Saunders is living at ’Frisco—
They say that he cuts quite a show.
You didn’t meet Euchre-deck Billy
Any where on your road to Cairo?
So you thought of the rusty old cabin—
The pines, and the valley below;
And heard the North Fork of the Yuba,
As you stood on the banks of the Po?
'Twas just like your romance, old fellow;
But now there is standing a row
Of stores on the site of the cabin
That you lived in a twelvemonth ago.
But it’s jolly to see you, old fellow—
To think it’s a twelvemonth ago!
And you have seen Louis Napoleon,
And look like a Johnny Crapaud.
Come in. You will surely see Mary—
You know we are married. What, no?
O, aye. I forgot there was something
Between you a twelvemonth ago.