Adulterated food at that price? Not a bit of it! The olive oil in the
salad was pure, California product - why adulterate when he could get it
so cheaply? The wine, too, was above reproach, for Louis made it
himself. Every autumn, he brought tons and tons of cheap Mission grapes,
set up a wine press in his back yard, and had a little, festival vintage
of his own. The fruit was small, and inferior, but fresh, and Louis
himself, in speaking of his business, said that he wished his guests
would eat nothing but fruit, it came so cheap.
The city never went to bed. There was no closing law, so that the
saloons kept open nights and Sundays at their own sweet will. Most of
the cafes elected to remain open until 2 o'clock in the morning at
least.
This restaurant life, however does not express exactly the careless,
pleasure-loving character of the people. In great part their pleasures
were simple, inexpensive and out of doors. No people were fonder of
expeditions into the country, of picnics - which might be brought off at
almost any season of the year - and of long tours in the great mountains
and forests.
Hospitality was nearly a vice. As in the early mining days, if they
liked the stranger the people took him in. At the first meeting the San
Francisco man had him put up at the club; at the second, he invited him
home to dinner. As long as the stranger stayed he was being invited to
week end parties at ranches, to little dinners in this or that
restaurant and to the houses of his new acquaintances, until his
engagements grew beyond hope of fulfilment. Perhaps there was rather too
much of this kind of thing. At the end of a fortnight a visitor with a
pleasant smile and a good story left the place a wreck. This tendency
ran through all grades of society - except, perhaps, the sporting people
who kept the tracks and the fighting game alive. These also met the
stranger - and also took him in.
Centres of man hospitality were the clubs, especially the famous
Bohemian and the Family. The latter was an offshot of the Bohemian; and
it had been growing fast and vieing with the older organization for the
honor of entertaining pleasing and distinguished visitors.
The Bohemian Club, whose real founder is said to have been the late
Henry George, was formed in the '70s by newspaper writers and men
working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a membership
of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers, musicians and
actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group of men, and
hospitality was their avocation. Yet the thing which set this club off
from all others in the world was the midsummer High Jinks.
