California, Southern -- Fiction; Motion picture industry -- Fiction; Petroleum industry and trade -- Fiction; Political fiction
And most amazing of all, Paul had got the books from Judge Minter’s
library. Most of them were still in boxes, because there was no place
for them; but Paul had made some shelves out of a packing-box, and there
stood Huxley and Haeckel and Renan, and other writers absolutely fatal
to the soul of any person who reads them. But “Pap” had given up, Ruth
said, she had got too growed up all of a sudden, too big to be “whaled;”
and besides, Pap’s rheumatix was terrible, and Eli couldn’t heal it. Dad
said that when they were ordering the lumber for the cabin they would
get some stuff for bookshelves, and Paul could build them during the
winter. Dad and Paul had another argument, and Dad said this was his
house, wasn’t it, and he sure had a right to put some bookshelves in it
if he wanted them; Paul could lend him some books when he come up here,
and jist help him get a bit of education, even now, as old as he was.
It was a happy family, and a fine place to be, because it took Dad’s
mind off his wells, and his trouble with one of his best foremen, that
had gone and got married to a fool flapper, and didn’t have his mind on
his work no more. They got the lumber from the dealer at Roseville, and
Paul was the “boss-carpenter,” and Bunny was the “jack-carpenter,” and
Dad kind of fussed around until he got to perspiring too hard, and then
he went and sat under the bougainvillea blossoms, and Ruth opened him a
bottle of grape-juice, that was part of the fancy stuff he had brought
in.
And then in the evening they would drive into Paradise and get the mail,
and there came a little local paper that old Mr. Watkins took, and Bunny
began to look it over, and gosh-amighty, look at this, Dad—a story on
the front page, about the marvelous meeting that Eli had held at Santa
Lucia, and how frenzied the worshipers had got, and Eli had made the
announcement that he had been commissioned to build the Tabernacle of
the Third Revelation, which was to be all of snow-white marble, with a
frieze of gold, and was to occupy one entire block in Angel City, and be
of exactly the dimensions which had been revealed to Eli in a dream. The
dimensions were given, and Dad said they were bigger than any block that
Eli would find in Angel City, but no doubt they’d find a way to get
round that, and call it a new Revelation. The Roseville “Eagle”—that
was the name of the paper—was boastful of Eli, who was “putting the San
Elido valley on the map,” it said. The Apostolic Church of Paradise was
to be rebuilt out of the “free will offerings” at Eli’s meetings; but
the old structure would be preserved, so that pilgrims might come to
visit the place where the True Word had been handed down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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