Their wounding—I surrender...
The almond blossom’s tender
Pale smoke is on the air....
As the car passed quickly the ends of the aisles between the rows of delicate and jointed fruit-trees, successive rays of violent green flashed along the perspectives into Edward’s eyes. Blinking at this, he hardly knew when first the mountain, Saint Helena, parted the little near hills and inserted between them its thickly blue peak.
“Hands praying ... or steeples ... or the peaks of mountains,” thought Edward. “They are all praising God always, whether there is a God or not.”
The father of Miss Weber was a retail merchant in Calistoga. He called his house not a house but a “home.” “My Pop has one elegant home right in the classy part of the city of Calistoga,” said Miss Weber.
The American of the Weber type chooses many of his words for their potential catch in the throat, as it were. Motherhood, manhood, lovelight, grip-o’-the-hand, the movies have made words of this kind music in the American ear. But words with home in them are the most popular—homestead, homeland, home-site, home-town, home-builder.... We who can live in houses and can see the word Mother in print with dry eyes or hear the glugging of someone else’s baby over its food in a cafeteria without vicarious domestic ecstasy, must seem very coarse to Americans. However, the missionary movies are with us now. We shall all no doubt eventually suffer a change of heart.
The Weber Home was made of wood, painted mustard yellow picked out in sky blue. It had a fancy roof and a jocose little castellated turret over one window, like a drunkard’s hat on one side.
Mrs. Weber was not so classy as her son, her daughter and her Home. She spent much of her time in the kitchen and was at first realised by Edward only as a shrill voice calling, “Walk right in, Son, make yessell at home,” in reply to her daughter’s announcement, “Oh, mom, meet my new beau, Ed Williams.”