Chapter VIII
The Ranch Story Continued
Cookies were not the only things in which Ying excelled. There were cakes fearfully and wonderfully decorated with frosting curly-cues, and custard pies so good that grandfather always included one with the doughnuts and cheese that little David carried in his lunch basket when he went up to visit his brother on the famous occasion when he slew Goliath with his sling shot.
Grandfather had left his Maine home and now sat on the sunny California porch and charmed his child audience with versions of the Hebrew stories that I judge he did not use in the pulpit of the dignified village church where he had ministered for so many years. But these adaptations existed even then, for I know now that they were not made for us but had served, a generation earlier, to delight our mothers. We learned how Samson’s strength returned when, in the temple of the Philistines, the hooting mob threw eggs at him. Grandfather was not unaware of the characteristics of mobs, for he was an avowed abolitionist and advocate of women’s rights when they were unpopular causes, although he himself was never favored with eggs. He used to agree with an old
