Hamlin Garland was born in the beautiful La Crosse valley, September 16, 1860, and lived there until he was eight years old. Twenty-three years ago he purchased the old homestead near West Salem, La Crosse County, and to this he delights to return each year for part of his summer. As one reads his description of the trip to West Salem over the Northwestern Line in his story, "Up the Cooley," he is compelled to see how much Mr. Garland loves the scenes of Wisconsin.

Among the other states which may share in the right to claim Hamlin Garland are Iowa, Massachusetts, Illinois, and South Dakota. In Iowa he learned what the rural school, the academy, and the farm could teach him. It was in the Boston Public Library that he formed much of his literary style and determined that the material for his future literary work should be the western life that he knew so well. In Illinois he began his work as a teacher and a lecturer. Here he met the girl who was to become his wife, Miss Zulima Taft, sister of the artist, Lorado Taft. Chicago is his present home. Mr. Garland visited his parents in South Dakota in 1883 and took up a claim there. Here he got material which he incorporated into some of his stories, among which the Moccassin Ranch is the most notable.

The experience in these several states gave Hamlin Garland an excellent opportunity to understand all phases of country life. He has expressed his observations in description of boys' games, the labor on the farm, the work of the rural school, and the varied activities of the rural community. He knew that the work of the farm in an early day furnished as much opportunity for the display of resistance and the determination to use the last bit of strength to win as does the game of the present. The work of binding the wheat after a reaper became a game requiring honesty as well as skill and rapidity. Perhaps no boy of today shoots a basket, makes a touch-down, or hits out a home run with more pride than did the youth of this pioneer life retire from the harvest field at noon or night with the consciousness that he had bound all his "tricks" without being caught once by the machine as it made its successive rounds of the field.

Hamlin Garland knew the joys of these contests on the pioneer farm, and he also knew the sordid side of the narrow and cramped life of the early settler. He describes both with equal vividness and sympathy. Wisconsin owes him much for the work he has done in preserving pictures of her early pioneer life. His hero and heroine are those ancestors who travelled forth into the new regions in covered wagons, and by the use of axe and plow conquered a seemingly unconquerable forest or a stubborn prairie sod. In his book of short stories, "Main Travelled Roads," he makes the dedication of it to his heroic parents in these words:

"To my father and mother, whose half-century pilgrimage on the main travelled road of life has brought them only toil and deprivation, this book of stories is dedicated by a son to whom every day brings a deepening sense of his parents' silent heroism."

To illustrate Mr. Garland's ability to picture the joyous and the irksome in the life of the pioneer two selections are given at this place. The first sets forth the joy of farm activity, the second, the disheartening influence of abject toil.

HAYING TIME

From "BOY LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE." Published by permission of Harper Bros.

Haying was the one season of farm work which the boys thoroughly enjoyed. It usually began on the tame meadows about the twenty-fifth of June, and lasted a week or so. It had always appealed to Lincoln,[1] in a distinctly beautiful and poetic sense, which was not true of the main business of farming. Most of the duties through which he passed needed the lapse of years to seem beautiful in his eyes, but haying had a charm and significance quite out of the common.

At this time the summer was at its most exuberant stage of vitality, and it was not strange that even the faculties of toiling old men, dulled and deadened with never ending drudgery, caught something of exultation from the superabundant glow and throb of Nature's life.

The corn fields, dark green and sweet-smelling, rippled like a sea with a multitudinous stir and sheen and swirl. Waves of dusk and green and yellow circled across the level fields, while long leaves upthrust at intervals like spears or shook like guidons. The trees were in heavy leaf, insect life was at its height, and the air was filled with buzzing, dancing forms and with the sheen of innumerable gauzy wings.

The air was shaken by most ecstatic voices. The bobolinks sailed and sang in the sensuous air, now sinking, now rising, their exquisite notes ringing, filling the air like the chimes of tiny silver bells. The kingbird, ever alert and aggressive, cried out sharply as he launched from the top of a poplar tree upon some buzzing insect, and the plover made the prairie sad with his wailing call. Vast purple-and-white clouds moved like bellying sails before the lazy wind, dark with rain, which they dropped momentarily like trailing garments upon the earth, and so passed on in stately measure with a roll of thunder.

The grasshoppers moved in clouds with snap and buzz, and out of the luxurious stagnant marshes came the ever thickening chorus of the toads and the frogs, while above them the kildees and the snipe shuttled to and fro in sounding flight, and the blackbirds on the cattails and willows swayed with lifted throats, uttering their subtle liquid notes, made mad with delight of the sun and their own music. And over all and through all moved the slow, soft west wind, laden with the breath of the far-off prairie lands of the west, soothing and hushing and filling the world with a slumbrous haze.

The weather in haying time was glorious, with only occasional showers to accentuate the splendid sunlight. There were no old men and no women in these fields. The men were young and vigorous, and their action was swift and supple. Sometimes it was hot to the danger point, especially on the windless side of the stack (no one had haybarns in those days) and sometimes the pitcher complained of cold chills running up his back. Sometimes Jack flung a pail full of water over his head and shoulders before beginning to unload, and seemed the better for it. Mr. Stewart kept plenty of "switchel" (which is composed of ginger and water) for his hands to drink. He had a notion that it was less injurious than water or beer, and no sun strokes occurred among his men.

Once, one hot afternoon, the air took on an oppressive density, the wind died away almost to a calm, blowing fitfully from the south, while in the far west a vast dome of inky clouds, silent and portentous, uplifted, filling the horizon, swelling like a great bubble, yet seeming to have the weight of a mountain range in its mass. The birds, bees, and all insects, hitherto vocal, suddenly sank into silence, as if awed by the first deep mutter of the storm. The mercury is touching one hundred degrees in the shade.

All hands hasten to get the hay in order, that it may shed rain. They hurry without haste, as only adept workmen can. They roll up the windrows by getting fork and shoulder under one end, tumbling it over and over endwise, till it is large enough; then go back for the scatterings, which are placed, with a deft turn of the fork, on the top to cap the pile. The boys laugh and shout as they race across the field. Every man is wet to the skin with sweat; hats are flung aside; Lincoln, on the rake, puts his horse to the trot. The feeling of the struggle, of racing with the thunder, exalts him.

Nearer and nearer comes the storm, silent no longer. The clouds are breaking up. The boys stop to listen. Far away is heard the low, steady, crescendo, grim roar; intermixed with crashing thunderbolts, the rain streams aslant, but there is not yet a breath of air from the west; the storm wind is still far away; the toads in the marsh, and the fearless king-bird, alone cry out in the ominous gloom cast by the rolling clouds of the tempest.

"Look out! here it comes!" calls the boss. The black cloud melts to form the gray veil of the falling rain, which blots out the plain as it sweeps on. Now it strikes the corn-field, sending a tidal wave rushing across it. Now it reaches the wind-break, and the spire-like poplars bow humbly to it. Now it touches the hay-field, and the caps of the cocks go flying; the long grass streams in the wind like a woman's hair. In an instant the day's work is undone and the hay is opened to the drenching rain.

As all hands rush for the house, the roaring tempest rides upon them like a regiment of demon cavalry. The lightning breaks forth from the blinding gray clouds of rain. As Lincoln looks up he sees the streams of fire go rushing across the sky like the branching of great red trees. A moment more, and the solid sheets of water fall upon the landscape, shutting it from view, and the thunder crashes out, sharp and splitting, in the near distance, to go deepening and bellowing off down the illimitable spaces of the sky and plain, enlarging, as it goes, like the rumor of war.

In the east is still to be seen a faint crescent of the sunny sky, rapidly being closed in as the rain sweeps eastward; but as that diminishes to a gleam, a similar window, faint, watery, and gray, appears in the west, as the clouds break away. It widens, grows yellow, and then red; and at last blazes out into an inexpressible glory of purple and crimson and gold, as the storm moves swiftly over. The thunder grows deeper, dies to a retreating mutter, and is lost. The clouds' dark presence passes away. The trees flame with light, the robins take up their songs again, the air is deliciously cool. The corn stands bent, as if still acknowledging the majesty of the wind. Everything is new-washed, clean of dust, and a faint, moist odor of green things fills the air.

Lincoln seizes the opportunity to take Owen's place in bringing the cattle, and mounting his horse gallops away. The road is wet and muddy, but the prairie is firm, and the pony is full of power. In full flower, fragrant with green grass and radiant with wild roses, sweet-williams, lilies, pinks, and pea-vines, the sward lies new washed by the rain, while over it runs a strong, cool wind from the west. The boy's heart swells with unutterable joy of life. The world is exaltingly beautiful. It is good to be alone, good to be a boy, and to be mounted on a swift horse.

AMONG THE CORN ROWS

From "MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS." Printed by permission of Harper Bros.

A corn-field in July is a sultry place. The soil is hot and dry; the wind comes across the lazily murmuring leaves laden with a warm, sickening smell drawn from the rapidly growing, broad-flung banners of the corn. The sun, nearly vertical, drops a flood of dazzling light upon the field over which the cool shadows run, only to make the heat seem the more intense.

Julia Peterson, faint with hunger, was toiling back and forth between the corn-rows, holding the handles of the double-shovel corn plow, while her little brother Otto rode the steaming horse. Her heart was full of bitterness, her face flushed with heat, and her muscles aching with fatigue. The heat grew terrible. The corn came to her shoulders, and not a breath seemed to reach her, while the sun, nearing the noon mark, lay pitilessly upon her shoulders, protected only by a calico dress. The dust rose under her feet, and as she was wet with perspiration it soiled her till with a woman's instinctive cleanliness, she shuddered. Her head throbbed dangerously. What matter to her that the king bird flitted jovially from the maple to catch a wandering blue bottle fly, that the robin was feeding her young, that the bobolink was singing. All these things, if she saw them, only threw her bondage to labor into greater relief.

Across the field, in another patch of corn, she could see her father—a big, gruff-voiced, wide-bearded Norwegian—at work also with a plow. The corn must be plowed, and so she toiled on, the tears dropping from the shadow of the ugly sun-bonnet she wore. Her shoes, coarse and square-toed, chafed her feet; her hands, large and strong, were browned, or, more properly, burnt, on the backs by the sun. The horse's harness "creak-cracked" as he swung steadily and patiently forward, the moisture pouring from his hide, his nostrils distended.

The field bordered on a road, and on the other side of the road ran a river—a broad, clear, shallow expanse at that point—and the eyes of the girl gazed longingly at the pond and the cool shadow each time that she turned at the fence.

This same contrast is expressed by Hamlin Garland in two poems presented here. The first, "Ploughing," sets forth the irksome toll to which the undeveloped boy was subjected. The second, "Ladrone," portrays the joy which the youth in the country acquires from association with the animals of the farm. These poems and all the following selections are taken from "Boy Life on the Prairie," and are here published by permission of the Macmillan Company.

PLOWING

LADRONE

Hamlin Garland's parents were of Scotch Presbyterian descent and were strict in their management of their children, but their lives were most wholesome and they were withal companionable. Their sacrifice and toil have been rewarded by the response their son has made to the opportunities they could offer him.

Besides the rural school training at Burr Oak, Iowa, Mr. Garland received additional education at Cedar Valley Seminary at Osage, where he attended school during the winter seasons. He graduated from this school in 1881 and then for a year travelled through the eastern states. His people later settled in Brown county, Dakota, and he visited them there in 1883.

In 1884 he went to Boston, where he came under the influence of Professor Moses True Brown of the Boston School of Oratory, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, Edward Everett Hale, and Edwin Booth.

Mr. Garland began his career as an author with the publication of his poem, "Lost in a Norther," in Harper's Weekly. For this poem he received twenty-five dollars. His work has been unusually remunerative. He has been a popular contributor to the Century Magazine, the Youth's Companion, the Arena, and other magazines. His first book was published in 1890. Mr. Garland enjoys social life and outdoor sports very much. He was the founder and is still the president of the Cliff Dwellers' Club in Chicago. He is especially fond of the outdoor sports of swimming, skating, and riding the trail on the plains and the mountains. The joy in this last is expressed in a poem which is given later.

Mr. Garland's publications include short stories, novels, essays, and poems. These book publications began with the short stories, Main Travelled Roads, in 1890. Since then have appeared Jason Edwards, 1891; A Member of the Third House, an exposure of political corruption, 1892; A Spoil of Office, 1892; Prairie Folks, Prairie Songs and Crumbling Idols, a series of critical essays, 1893; Rose of Dutcher's Coolly, a novel, 1895; Wayside Courtships, 1897; a Biography of Ulysses S. Grant, 1898; the Trail of the Gold Seekers and Boy Life on the Prairie, 1899; the Eagle's Heart, 1900; Her Mountain Lover, a novel, 1901; The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop, another novel, 1902; Hesper, 1903; The Tyranny of the Dark, a study in psychic research, 1905; The Long Trail, 1907; the Shadow World, another study in the psychic field, 1908; The Moccassin Ranch, 1909; Cavanagh, Forest Ranger, a study in forest preservation, 1911; Victor Olnee's Discipline, 1911; The Forest Daughter, 1913; and They of the High Trails, 1916.

THE TOIL OF THE TRAIL

THE BLUE JAY

POM-POM PULL-AWAY.

THE OLD FASHIONED THRESHING IN GREEN'S COOLLY, WISCONSIN

From "BOY LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE." Published by permission of Harper Bros.

Life on a Wisconsin farm, even for the older lads, had its compensations. There were times when the daily routine of lonely and monotonous life gave place to an agreeable bustle for a few days, and human intercourse lightened toil. In the midst of the dull, slow progress of the fall's ploughing, the gathering of the threshing crew was a most dramatic event.

There had been great changes in the methods of threshing since Mr. Stewart had begun to farm, but it had not yet reached the point where steam displaced the horse-power; and the grain, after being stacked round the barn ready to be threshed, was allowed to remain until late in the fall before calling in a machine.

Of course, some farmers got at it earlier, for all could not thresh at the same time, and a good part of the fall's labor consisted in "changing works" with the neighbors, thus laying up a stock of unpaid labor ready for the home job. Day after day, therefore, Mr. Stewart and the hired man shouldered their forks in the crisp and early dawn and went to help their neighbors, while the boys ploughed the stubble-land.

All through the months of October and November, the ceaseless ringing hum and the bow-ouw, ouw-woo booee-oom of the great balance wheel of the threshing-machine, and the deep bass hum of the whirling cylinder, as its motion rose and fell, could be heard on every side like the singing of some sullen and gigantic autumnal insect.

For weeks Lincoln had looked forward to the coming of the threshers with the greatest eagerness, and during the whole of the day appointed, Owen and he hung on the gate and gazed down the road to see if the machine was coming. It did not come during the afternoon—still they could not give it up, and at the falling of dusk still hoped to hear the rattle of its machinery.

It was not uncommon for the men who attended to these machines to work all day at one place and move to another setting at night. In that way, they might not arrive until 9 o'clock at night, or they might come at 4 o'clock in the morning, and the children were about starting to "climb the wooden hill" when they heard the peculiar rattle of the cylinder and the voices of the McTurgs, singing.

"There they are," said Mr. Stewart, getting the old square lantern and lighting the candle within. The air was sharp, and the boys, having taken off their boots, could only stand at the window and watch the father as he went out to show the men where to set the "power," the dim light throwing fantastic shadows here and there, lighting up a face now and then, and bringing out the thresher, which seemed a silent monster to the children, who flattened their noses against the window-panes to be sure that nothing should escape them. The men's voices sounded cheerfully in the still night, and the roused turkeys in the oaks peered about on their perches, black silhouettes against the sky. The children would gladly have stayed up to greet the threshers, who were captains of industry in their eyes, but they were ordered off to bed by Mrs. Stewart, who said, "You must go to sleep in order to be up early in the morning." As they lay there in their beds under the sloping rafter roof, they heard the[2] hand riding furiously away to tell some of the neighbors that the threshers had come. They could hear the cackle of the hens as Mr. Stewart assaulted them and wrung their innocent necks. The crash of the "sweeps" being unloaded sounded loud and clear in the night, and so watching the dance of the lights and shadows cast by the lantern on the plastered wall, they fell asleep.

They were awakened next morning by the ringing beat of the iron sledge as the men drove stakes to hold the "power" to the ground. The rattle of chains, the clang of iron bars, intermixed with laughter and snatches of song, came sharply through the frosty air. The smell of sausages being fried in the kitchen, the rapid tread of their busy mother as she hurried the breakfast forward, warned the boys that it was time to get up, although it was not yet dawn in the east, and they had a sense of being awakened to a strange, new world. When they got down to breakfast, the men had finished their coffee and were out in the stock-yard completing preparations.

This morning experience was superb. Though shivery and cold in the faint frosty light of the day, the children enjoyed every moment of it. The frost lay white on every surface, the frozen ground rang like iron under the steel-shod feet of the horses, the breath of the men rose up in little white puffs while they sparred playfully or rolled each other on the ground in jovial clinches of legs and arms.

The young men were anxiously waiting the first sound which should rouse the countryside and proclaim that theirs was the first machine to be at work. The older men stood in groups, talking politics or speculating on the price of wheat, pausing occasionally to slap their hands about their breasts.

Finally, just as the east began to bloom and long streamers of red began to unroll along the vast gray dome of sky, Joe Gilman—"Shouting Joe," as he was called—mounted one of the stacks, and throwing down the cap-sheaf, lifted his voice in a "Chippewa warwhoop." On a still morning like this his voice could be heard three miles. Long drawn and musical, it sped away over the fields, announcing to all the world that the McTurgs were ready for the race. Answers came back faintly from the frosty fields, where the dim figures of laggard hands could be seen hurrying over the ploughland; then David called "All right," and the machine began to hum.

In those days the machine was a J. I. Case or a "Buffalo Pits" separator, and was moved by five pairs of horses attached to a power staked to the ground, round which they travelled to the left, pulling at the ends of long levers or sweeps. The power was planted some rods away from the machine, to which the force was carried by means of "tumbling rods," with "knuckle joints." The driver stood upon a platform above the huge, savage, cog-wheels round which the horses moved, and he was a great figure in the eyes of the boys.

Driving looked like an easy job, but it was not. It was very tiresome to stand on that small platform all through the long day of the early fall, and on cold November mornings when the cutting wind roared over the plain, sweeping the dust and leaves along the road. It was far pleasanter to sit on the south side of the stack, as Tommy did, and watch the horses go round. It was necessary also for the driver to be a man of good judgment, for the power must be kept just to the right speed, and he should be able to gauge the motion of the cylinder by the pitch of its deep bass hum. There were always three men who went with the machine and were properly "the threshers." One acted as driver; the others were respectively "feeder" and "tender"; one of them fed the grain into the rolling cylinder, while the other, oil-can in hand, "tended" the separator. The feeder's position was the high place to which all boys aspired, and they used to stand in silent admiration watching the easy, powerful swing of David McTurg as he caught the bundles in the crook of his arm, and spread them out into a broad, smooth band upon which the cylinder caught and tore like some insatiate monster, and David was the ideal man in Lincoln's eyes, and to be able to feed a threshing machine, the highest honor in the world. The boy who was chosen to cut bands went to his post like a soldier to dangerous picket duty.

Sometimes David would take one of the small boys upon his stand, where he could see the cylinder whiz while flying wheat stung his face. Sometimes the driver would invite Tommy on the power to watch the horses go round, and when he became dizzy often took the youngster in his arms and running out along the moving sweep, threw him with a shout into David's arms.

The boys who were just old enough to hold sacks for the measurer, did not enjoy threshing so well, but to Lincoln and his mates it was the keenest joy. They wished it would never end.

The wind blew cold and the clouds were flying across the bright blue sky, the straw glistened in the sun, the machine howled, the dust flew, the whip cracked, and the men worked like beavers to get the sheaves to the feeder, and to keep the straw and wheat away from the tail-end of the machine. These fellows, wallowing to their waists in the chaff, did so for the amusement of the boys, and for no other reason.

They were always amused by the man who stood in the midst of the thick dust and the flying chaff at the head of the stacker, who took and threw away the endless cataract of straw as if it were all play. His teeth shown like those of a negro out of his dust blackened face, and his shirt was wet with sweat, but he motioned for more straw, and the feeder, accepting the challenge, motioned for more speed, and so the driver swung his lash and yelled at the straining horses, the pitchers buckled to, the sleepy growl of the cylinder rose to a howl, the wheat rushed out in a stream as "big as a stove-pipe," and the carriers were forced to trot back and forth from the granary like mad, and to generally "hump themselves" in order to keep the grain from piling up around the measurer where Ellis stood disconsolately holding sacks for old man Smith.

When the children got tired of wallowing in the straw, and with turning somersaults therein, they went down to help Rover catch the rats which were uncovered by the pitchers when they reached the stack bottom. It was all play to Lincoln, just as it had once been to the others. The horses, with their straining, outstretched necks, the loud and cheery shouts, the whistling of the driver, the roar and hum of the machinery, the flourishing of the forks, the supple movements of the brawny arms, the shouts of the threshers to one another, all blended with the wild sound of the wind overhead in the creaking branches of the oaks, formed a splendid drama for his recording brain.

But for the boy who was forced to stand with old Daddy Smith in the flying dust beside the machine, it was a bad play. He was a part of the machine—of the crew. His liberty to come and go was gone. When Daddy was grinning at him out of the gray dust and the swirling chaff, the wheat beards were crawling down his back, scratching and rasping. His ears were stunned by the noise of the cylinder and the howl of the balance-wheel, and it did not help him any to have the old man say in a rasping voice, "Never mind the chaff, sonny—it ain't pizen."

Whirr—bang! Something had gone into the cylinder, making the feeder dodge to escape the flying teeth, and the men seized the horses to stop the machine. The men then hailed such accidents with delight, for it afforded them a few minutes' rest while the crew put some new teeth in the "concave." They had time to unbutton their shirts and get some of the beards out of their necks, to take a drink of water, and to let the deafness go out of their ears.

At such times also some of the young fellows were sure to have a wrestling or a lifting match, and all kinds of jokes flew about. The man at the straw-stack leaned indolently on his fork and asked the feeder sarcastically if that was the best he could do, and remarked, "It's gettin' chilly up here. Guess I'll have to go home and get my kid gloves."

To this David laughingly responded, "I'll warm your carcass with a rope if you don't shut up," all of which gave the boys infinite delight.

But the work began again, and Ellis was forced to take his place as regularly as the other men. As the sun neared the zenith, he looked often up to it—so often in fact that Daddy, observing it, cackled in great amusement, "Think you c'n hurry it along, sonny? The watched pot never boils, remember!"—which made the boy so angry he nearly kicked the old man on the shin.

But at last the call for dinner sounded, the driver began to shout, "Whoa there, boys," to the teams and to hold his long whip before their eyes in order to convince them that he really meant "Whoa." The pitchers stuck their forks down in the stack and leaped to the ground; Billy, the band-cutter, drew from his wrist the string of his big knife; the men slid down from the straw-pile and a race began among the teamsters to see who should be first unhitched and at the watering trough and at the table.

It was always a splendid and dramatic moment to the boys as the men crowded round the well to wash, shouting, joking, cuffing each other, sloshing themselves with water, and accusing each other of having blackened the towel by using it to wash with rather than to wipe with.

Mrs. Stewart and the hired girl, and generally some of the neighbors' wives (who changed "works" also) stood ready to bring on the food as soon as the men were seated. The table had been lengthened to its utmost and pieced out with the kitchen table, which usually was not of the same height, and planks had been laid for seats on stout kitchen chairs at each side. The men came in with noisy rush and took seats wherever they could find them, and their attack on "biled taters and chicken" should have been appalling to the women, but it was not. They smiled to see them eat. A single slash at a boiled potato, followed by two motions, and it disappeared. Grimy fingers lifted a leg of chicken to a wide mouth, and two snaps laid it bare as a slate pencil. To the children standing in the corner waiting, it seemed that every smitch of the dinner was going and that nothing would be left when the men got through, but there was, for food was plentiful.

At last even the "gantest" of them filled up. Even Len had his limits, and something remained for the children and the women, who sat down at the second table, while David and William and Len returned to the machine to put everything in order, to sew the belts, or take a bent tooth out of the "concave." Len, however, managed to return two or three times in order to have his jokes with the hired girl, who enjoyed it quite as much as he did.

In the short days of October only a brief nooning was possible, and as soon as the horses had finished their oats, the roar and hum of the machine began again and continued steadily all afternoon. Owen and Rover continued their campaign upon the rats which inhabited the bottom of the stacks and great was their excitement as the men reached the last dozen sheaves. Rover barked and Owen screamed half in fear and half from a boy's savage delight in killing things, and very few rats escaped their combined efforts.

To Ellis the afternoon seemed endless. His arms grew tired with holding the sacks against the lip of the half bushel, and his fingers grew sore with the rasp of the rough canvas out of which the sacks were made. When he thought of the number of times he must repeat these actions, his heart was numb with weariness.

All things have an end! By and by the sun grew big and red, night began to fall and the wind to die down. Through the falling gloom the machine boomed steadily with a new sound, a sort of solemn roar, rising at intervals to a rattling yell as the cylinder ran empty. The men were working silently, sullenly, moving dim and strange; the pitchers on the stack, the feeder on the platform, and especially the workers on the high straw-pile, seemed afar off to Lincoln's eyes. The gray dust covered the faces of those near by, changing them into something mysterious and sad. At last he heard the welcome cry, "Turn out!" The men raised glad answer and threw aside their forks.

Again came the gradual slowing down of the motion, while the driver called in a gentle, soothing voice: "Whoa, lads! Steady, boys, Whoa, now!" But the horses had been going on so long and so steadily that they checked their speed with difficulty. The men slid from the stacks, and seizing the ends of the sweeps, held them; but even after the power was still, the cylinder went on, until David, calling for a last sheaf, threw it in its open maw, choking it into silence.

Then came the sound of dropping chains and iron rods, and the thud of the hoofs as the horses walked with laggard gait and down-falling heads to the barn. The men were more subdued than at dinner, washing with greater care, brushing the dust from their beards and clothes. The air was still and cool, the wind was gone, the sky deep, cloudless blue.

The evening meal was more attractive to the boys than dinner. The table was lighted with a kerosene lamp, and the clean white linen, the fragrant dishes, the women flying about with steaming platters, all seemed very dramatic, very cheering to Lincoln as well as to the men who came into the light and warmth with aching muscles and empty stomach.

There was always a good deal of talk at supper, but it was gentler than at the dinner hour. The younger fellows had their jokes, of course, and watched the hired girl attentively, while the old fellows discussed the day's yield of grain and the matters of the township. Ellis was now allowed a place at the first table like a first-class hand.

The pie and the doughnuts and the coffee disappeared as fast as they could be brought, which seemed to please Mrs. Stewart, who said, "Goodness sakes, yes; eat all you want. They was made to eat."

The men were all, or nearly all, neighbors, or hands hired by the month, and some were like members of the family. Mrs. Stewart treated them all like visitors and not like hired help. No one feared a genuine rudeness from the other.

After they had eaten their supper it was a great pleasure to the boys to go out to the barn and shed (all wonderfully changed now to their minds by the great new stack of straw), there to listen to the stories or jolly remarks of the men as they curried their tired horses munching busily at their hay, too weary to move a muscle otherwise, but enjoying the rubbing down which the men gave them with wisps of straws held in each hand.

The light from the kitchen was very welcome, and how bright and warm it was with the mother's merry voice and smiling face where the women were moving to and fro, and talking even more busily than they worked.

Sometimes in these old-fashioned days, after the supper table was cleared out of the way, and the men returned to the house, an hour or two of delicious merry making ended the day. Perhaps two or three of the sisters of the young men had dropped in, and the boys themselves were in no hurry to get home.

Around the fire the older men sat to tell stories while the girls trudged in and out, finishing up the dishes and getting the materials ready for breakfast. With speechless content Lincoln sat to listen to stories of bears and Indians and logging on the Wisconsin, and other tales of frontier life, and then at last, after beseeching, David opened the violin box and played. Strange how those giant hands became supple to the strings and bow. All day they had been handling the fierce straw or were covered with the grease and dirt of the machine, yet now they drew from the violin the wildest, weirdest strains, thrilling Norse folk songs, Swedish dances and love ballads, mournful, sensuous, and seductive.

Lincoln could not understand why those tunes had that sad, sweet quality, but he could sit and listen to them all night long.

Oh, those rare days and rarer nights! How fine they were then—and how mellow they are growing now as the slow-paced years drop a golden mist upon them. From this distance they seem so near that my heart aches to relive them, but they are so wholesome and so carefree that the world is poorer for the change.

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