Life is an Adventure

By Mrs. A.J. Wilder

Voyages of Discovery Can be Made in Your Rocking-chair

As I was passing through the Missouri building at the exposition last summer, I overheard a scrap of conversation between two women. Said the first woman, “How do you like San Francisco?” The other replied, “I don’t like San Francisco at all! Everywhere I go there is a Chinaman on one side, a Jap on the other and a nigger behind.”

These women were missing a great deal, for the foreign life of San Francisco is very interesting and the strange vari-colored peoples on the streets give a touch of color and picturesqueness that adds much to the charm of the city. A morning’s walk from the top of Russian Hill, where I lived when there, would take me thru “Little Italy” where one hears Italian spoken on all sides: where the people are black-eyed and handsome with a foreign beauty and where, I am sure, the children are the most beautiful in the world.

From here I passed directly into “Chinatown” where the quaint babies look exactly like Chinese dolls and the older people look as if they had stepped out of a Chinese picture. The women in their comfortable loose garments made of black or soft colored silks, with their shiny, smoothly combed back hair full of bright ornaments, were, some of them, very pretty. Only the older men seemed to be wearing the Chinese dress. The younger men were dressed like any American business man. It is a curious fact that the second generation of Chinese born in San Francisco are much larger than their parents and look a great deal like our own people, while the third generation can scarcely be distinguished from Americans. And oh the shops of Chinatown! I do not understand how any woman could resist their fascination. Such quaint and wonderful jewelry, such wonderful pieces of carved ivory, such fine pottery, and silks and embroideries as one finds there!

Wandering on from Chinatown I would soon be at Market street, which is the main business street of San Francisco, and everywhere, as the women in the Missouri building had said, there was “a Chinaman on one side, a Jap on the other, and a nigger behind.”

It gives a stay-at-home Middle Westerner something of a shock to meet a group of turbaned Hindoos on the street, or a Samoan, a Filipino or even a Mexican. People in happier times spent hundreds of dollars and months of time in traveling to see these foreign people and their manner of living. It is all to be seen, on a smaller scale, in this city of our own country.

Walking on the Zone one day at the fair, Daughter and I noticed ahead of us five sailormen. They were walking along discussing which one of the attractions they should visit. They were evidently on shore for a frolic. Tired of “rocking in the cradle of the deep,” they were going to enjoy something different on shore. Should they see the wonderful educated horse? “No! Who cared anything about an old horse!” Should they see Creation, the marvelous electrical display? “No! Not that! We’re here for a good time, aren’t we?” Perhaps by now you suspect that Daughter and I had become so interested we determined to know which of the attractions they decided was worth while. We followed with the crowd at their heels. The sailors passed the places of amusement one after another until they came to a mimic river, with a wharf and row boats, oars and all. Immediately they made a rush for the wharf and the last we saw of them they were tumbling hilariously into one of the boats, for a good old row on the pleasant familiar water.

Do you know, they reminded me someway, of the women in the Missouri building who did not like San Francisco.

A friend of mine tried to sympathize with a woman for being “tied down” to a farm, with no opportunity to travel or study; and with none of the advantages of town or city life. To her surprise she found that her sympathy was not needed. “My body may be tied here,“ her friend said, “but my mind is free. Books and papers are cheap and what I cannot buy I can borrow. I have traveled all over the world.”

The daughter of this woman was raised with a varied assortment of these same books and papers, pictures and magazines. When later she traveled over the United States, becoming familiar with the larger cities as well as the country, from Canada to the Gulf and from San Francisco to New York City, she said there was a great disappointment to her in traveling. She seemed to have seen it all before and thus had no “thrills” from viewing strange things. “I have read about foreign countries just as much” she said “and don’t suppose I’ll find anything in the world that will be entirely new to me.” Which shows that a very good travel education can be had from books and papers and also proves once more the old saying that, ”As the twig is bent the tree inclines.”

Over at a neighbor’s the other day, I learned something new, as by the way quite often happens. She has little soft home-made mattresses as thick as a good comfort to lay over the top of the large mattresses on her beds. Over these small mattresses she slips a cover as one does on a pillow. They are easily removed for washings and protect the mattress from soil, making it a simper matter to keep the beds clean and sweet.

This neighbor also makes her sheets last twice as long, by a little trick she has. When the sheets begin to wear thin in the middle she tears them down the center and sews the outsides together. Then she hems the outer edges down the sides. This throws the thin part to the outside and the center, where the wear comes is as good as new. Of course the sheet has a seam down the middle, but it is not so very many years ago that all our sheets were that way, before we had sheeting and pillow tubing.

It is no use trying! I seem unable today to get away from the idea of travel, perhaps because I read the “national Geographic Magazine” last night. A sentence in one of the articles keeps recurring to me and I am going to quote it to you for you may not have noticed it. “It is not a figure of speech to say that every American has it in his heart that he is in a small sense a discoverer; that he is joining in the revelation to the world of something that it was not before aware of and of which it may some day make use.”

We have the right, you know, to take a thought and appropriate it to our won uses, and so I have been turning this one over and over in my mind with all sorts of strange ramifications. The greater number of us cannot be discoveries of the kind referred to in the article quoted, for like the woman before mentioned, our bodies are tied more of less securely to our home habitat, but I am sure we are discoverers at heart. Life is often called a journey, “the journey of life.” Usually when referred to in these terms it is also understood that it is “a weary pilgrimage.” Why not call it a voyage of discovery and take it in the spirit of happy adventure?

Adventurers and travelers worthy the name always make nothing of the difficulties they meet; nor are they so intent on the goal that they do not make discoveries on the way. Has anyone ever said to you, as a warning, “No man knoweth what a day may bring forth” I have heard it often and it is always quoted with a melancholy droop at the corners of the mouth. But why! Suppose we do not know what will happen tomorrow. May it not just as well be a happy surprise as something unpleasant? To me it is a joy that “no man knoweth what a day may bring forth” and that life is a journey from one discovery to another. It makes of every day a real adventure; and if things are not to my liking today, why, “There’s a whole day tomorrer that ain’t teched yet,” as the old darkey said, “No man knoweth” what the day will be like. It is absolutely undiscovered country. I’ll just travel along and find out for myself. Did you ever take a little trip anywhere with your conscience easy about things at home, your mid free from worry; and will all care cast aside and eyes wide open, give yourself to the joy of every passing incident; looking for interesting things which happened every moment? If you have, you will understand. If not, you should try it and you will be surprised how much of adventure can enter into ordinary things.

Mrs. A. J. Wilder. "Life is an Adventure." Missouri Ruralist (March 5, 1916): 14-15.

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