AN AMERICAN ELYSIUM

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2613, 8 November 1915, Page 3

AN AMERICAN ELYSIUM

i MR. GREGSON'S IMPRESSIONS OF SAN DIEGO. ; Tho boast of San Diego, the Southern Californian town, and the first port of call in the United States for steamers that have passed West through the Panama Canal —is that there is never an hour in the year when tho temperature is above 80 degrees Fahr., nor less than 60 degrees. There is said to be no place in the world, not oven Honolulu, where the climate. is so equable, but Mr. Harold Gregson, the Auckland organist, who visited the place recently to play at the Exposition there, is inclined to tho belief that such everlasting perfect weather becomes rather monotonous at times, and induces a characteristic lethargy in permanent residents. So perfect is tho weather that the organ at the Exposition, was erected in the open air, and such conditions are responsible for San Diegons' support of thoir pleasant city as the site of the American Beyreuth for the production under special conditions of the Wagnerian operas. Just as Japan is stealing German trade in many lines of cheap manufactures, America is contemplating a new Beyreuth, far away from all European strife. It is, however, very close to another land of apparently endless strife —Mexico. An hour's ride in a motor-oar from San Diego will put anyone across the Mexican border, at Ti Juana, where one may witness the bullfight and absorb all the dusty atmosphere he likes of the Toal Spanish Main. There were no hull-fights on when Mr. Gregson visited this quaint little town, but at tho Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco there Tvero entertainments perilously near to that disgusting recreation. The bull was tantalised with darts, kit not killed, and one of the picadors was actually injured. Mr. Gregson states that Mr. J. D. Spreokles is largly responsible for the booming of San Diego, which has grown from a'"city of 39,000 to one of 80,000 in tho last five years, and is still leaping ahead. It ,is proposed that the Exposition buildings ana grounds there shall be permanently retained as a park and museum for all time. As the grounds are extremely beautiful, and the buildings are substantial and highly picturesque in their simulation of the old Spanish Mission style of architecture, the proposal is one of the greatest aesthetic value.

Mr. and Mrs. Gregson also stayed at the twonderful Hotel Del Monte, two hours'. motor ride from San Francisco, and one of the few places that actually, came up to all expectations. At this great institution or country club—it is not run for gain—they defy you to ask for anything they cannot produce, from symphony orchestra to a game of golf, from a ragtime cabaret to a Turkish bath.. It is a complete world. The dining-room scats five hundred people, and there were about .that number there when tho Gregsons visited the place. Around the place are perfect motor ; drives ,orange groves, cacti plots, tennis courts, baths, hot, swimming, and cold, and the tariff is only five dollars a day., At the,' Frisco Exposition, Mr. Gregson had the pleasure of inspecting the wonderful model of the Panama Canal, which even Colonel Goethals said was an amazing piece of work: The Canal has been modelled in circular form, and covers, some acres of ground. , Tljei audience starids on a movable platform in the centre, and as they travel slowly along the Canal a high-powered gramophone lectures on that part of the Canal the audience is opposite; : This gramo-megaphone apparatus is : timed exactly to the speed of tho moving platform, so that at whichever point a'passenger may , step on to the platform he can at once pick up the drift of the lecture. Colonel Goethals, the designer and builder of the Canal, was in San Francisco during the visit of Mr. and Mrs. Gregson, who heard him deliver a lecture.

The visitors leave to-day for Napier and Gisborne (where Mr. Gregson is to give recitals) en route for Auckland.