Then
you hurry home for supper and home seems good and sometimes you even
light a little fire in the grate.
Still it is not a cold fog, it is not a wet fog, it is never an unkind
fog. It comes swiftly, but very gently, and lays its cool, dainty hand
on your face lovingly. Hands are so different, sticky or wet or clammy
or hot, but the hand of the San Francisco fog is the hand of a kind
nurse on a tired head. The rain is a beautiful thing too, but the fog
has another significance. - It is the "small rain" that Moses spoke of -
"My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew,
as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the
grass."
It is very beautiful too. My, but I've seen fogs that were ugly, and
heard the fisherman say "She's pretty thick tonight." San Francisco fog
is not like that, but like great billows of a bride's veil. Then in the
morning when the sun comes it chases the bride and her veil out so fast,
and they go out to sea together, sunshine and fog.
The other morning I awakened very early and there in the square of my
window was a hard, black cube against a white background. I lay there
and blinked and wondered where that telephone pole had come from, which
like Jack's beanstalk, had grown there overnight. Then I saw that the
fog had shut out the whole world and brought that pole close, and made
it seem big and formidable and ugly.
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