Southern California, by which is understood all of the State south of the Tehachapi Mountains, was mostly settled by and is still to a great extent the objective point of people from the East and Middle West.  Most of them came in search of health and brought a competency sufficient for their needs.  When President Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey, visited California in 1911, he came over the southern route to Los Angeles.  Addressing a Pasadena audience he said:  “I am much disappointed when I see you.  I expected to find a highly individualized people, characters developed by struggle and mutual effort; but I find you the same people we have at home,” and more, to the same effect.  Subsequently, Governor Wilson delivered an address at the Greek Theater, Berkeley, before the students of the University of California.  At its close, Mr. Maslin mounted the stage, a copy of the paper containing the account of the Pasadena speech in his hands, and asked the Governor if he was correctly reported; to which he replied in the affirmative.  “Governor,” said Mr. Maslin, you came into the State at the wrong gate!” “Gate? gate? — what gate?” inquired the Governor.  “You should have come through Emigrant Gap, through which most of the emigrants from ’49 and on entered the State.  Now, Governor, the people you saw at Pasadena never suffered the trials of a pioneer’s lite, they are not knit together by the memory of mutual struggles and privations.  When you come to the State again, come through Emigrant Gap.  Let me know when you come, and I will introduce you to a breed of men the world has never excelled.”  With the smile with which millions have since become familiar, Governor Wilson grasped the hand of the pioneer and said:  “When I come again, as I feel sure I shall, I shall let you know.”

The following morning I took the train for my home in Alameda.  As I sat and meditated on the scenes I had witnessed and the character of the people I had met, it was borne in upon me that this had been the most interesting as well as enjoyable experience of my life.  Already the temporary discomforts produced by heat and soiled garments had faded into insignificance, and assumed a most trivial aspect when I reviewed the journey as a whole.  They were part of the game.  To again quote “Trilby,” tramping “is not all beer and skittles.”  Your true tramp learns to take things as he finds them and never to expect or ask or the impossible.  He will drink the wine of the country, even when sour, without a grimace; pass without grumbling a sleepless night; plod through dust ankle deep, without a murmur; there is but one vulnerable feature in his armor, and with Achilles, it is his heel!  And it is literally the heel that, is the sensitive spot.  I will venture the assertion that the long-distance tramper — not even excepting Brother Weston — who has not at some time or another suffered from sore heels, does not exist.  The tramp’s feet are his means of locomotion; on their condition he bestows an anxiety and care which far surpass that of the man in the automobile, with all his complicated machinery to inspect.