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BLIX by Frank Norris 1899

Chapter I
IT had just struck nine from the cuckoo clock that hung over the
mantelpiece in the dining-room, when Victorine brought in the halved
watermelon and set it in front of Mr. Bessemer's plate. Then she went
down to the front door for the damp, twisted roll of the Sunday
morning's paper, and came back and rang the breakfast- bell for the
second time. As the family still hesitated to appear, she went to the bay
window at the end of the room, and stood there for a moment looking
out. The view was wonderful. The Bessemers lived upon the
Washington Street hill, almost at its very summit, in a flat in the third
story of the building. The contractor had been clever enough to reverse
the position of kitchen and dining-room, so that the latter room was at
the rear of the house. From its window one could command a sweep of
San Francisco Bay and the Contra Costa shore, from Mount Diablo,
along past Oakland, Berkeley, Sausalito, and Mount Tamalpais, out to
the Golden Gate, the Presidio, the ocean, and even--on very clear
days--to the Farrallone islands. For some time Victorine stood looking
down at the great expanse of land and sea, then faced about with an
impatient exclamation. On Sundays all the week-day regime of the
family was deranged, and breakfast was a movable feast, to be had any
time after seven or before half-past nine. As Victorine was pouring the
ice-water, Mr. Bessemer himself came in, and addressed himself at
once to his meal, without so much as a thought of waiting for the others.
He was a little round man. He wore a skull-cap to keep his bald spot
warm, and read his paper through a reading-glass. The expression of his
face, wrinkled and bearded, the eyes shadowed by enormous gray
eyebrows, was that of an amiable gorilla. Bessemer was one of those

men who seem entirely disassociated from their families. Only on rare
and intense occasions did his paternal spirit or instincts assert
themselves. At table he talked but little. Though devotedly fond of his
eldest daughter, she was a puzzle and a stranger to him. His interests
and hers were absolutely dissimilar. The children he seldom spoke to
but to reprove; while Howard, the son, the ten-year-old and terrible
infant of the household, he always referred to as "that boy." He was an
abstracted, self-centred old man, with but two hobbies-- homoeopathy
and the mechanism of clocks. But he had a strange way of talking to
himself in a low voice, keeping up a running, half- whispered comment
upon his own doings and actions; as, for instance, upon this occasion:
"Nine o'clock--the clock's a little fast. I think I'll wind my watch. No,
I've forgotten my watch. Watermelon this morning, eh? Where's a knife?
I'll have a little salt. Victorine's forgot the spoons--ha, here's a spoon!
No, it's a knife I want." After he had finished his watermelon, and
while Victorine was pouring his coffee, the two children came in,
scrambling to their places, and drumming on the table with their
knife-handles. The son and heir, Howard, was very much a boy. He
played baseball too well to be a very good boy, and for the sake of his
own self- respect maintained an attitude of perpetual revolt against his
older sister, who, as much as possible, took the place of the mother,
long since dead. Under her supervision, Howard blacked his own shoes
every morning before breakfast, changed his underclothes twice a week,
and was dissuaded from playing with the dentist's son who lived three
doors below and who had St. Vitus' dance. His little sister was much
more tractable. She had been christened Alberta, and was called
Snooky. She promised to be pretty when she grew up, but was at this
time in that distressing transitional stage between twelve and fifteen;
was long-legged, and endowed with all the awkwardness of a colt. Her
shoes were still innocent of heels; but on those occasions when she was
allowed to wear her tiny first pair of corsets she was exalted to an
almost celestial pitch of silent ecstasy. The clasp of the miniature stays
around her small body was like the embrace of a little lover, and awoke
in her ideas that were as