Hamlin Garland

“ How far away, how remote, how tender that evening seems to me after more than twenty years work and travel! To Zulime it unrolled like a scene from one of my novels, to me it was the closing, fading picture of an era, the end of an epoch, the passing of a race, for the Garlands and McClintocks, warriors of the western conquest, representatives of a heroic generation were even then basking in the light of a dying camp-fire, recounting the deeds of brave days gone.
When we were again alone in my study, Zulime said, "I'm going to enjoy it here. I like your people, and I hope they liked me." ”

“ One day, just as the early sown wheat was beginning to throw a tinge of green over the brown earth, a tremendous wind arose from the southwest and blew with such devastating fury that the soil, caught up from the field, formed a cloud, hundreds of feet high,—a cloud which darkened the sky, turning noon into dusk and sending us all to shelter. All the forenoon this blizzard of loam raged, filling the house with dust, almost smothering the cattle in the stable. Work was impossible, even for the men. The growing grain, its roots exposed to the air, withered and died. ”

“ Not so much as a pine branch, not even a willow
Shall swing in the air 'twixt us and our God.
Naked and lone we cross the wide ferry,
Bare to the cold, the dark and the rain.
For here the trail ends.
Here the trail ends. Here by the landing
I wait the last boat, the slow silent one.
We each go alone—no man with another,
Each into the gloom of the swift black flood—
Boys, it is hard, but here we must scatter;
The gray boatman waits, and I—I go first.
All is dark over there where the dim boat is rocking—
But that is no matter! No man need to fear ”

“ Around and through all this, listening with confused ears, gazing with wide, solemn eyes, were hundreds of young men from the middle East, farmers' sons, cowboys, mountaineers, and miners. To them it was an awesome city, this lurid camp, a wonder and an allurement to dissipation.
To Mose, fresh from the long trail, it was irritating and wearying. He stood at the door of a saloon, superbly unconscious of his physical beauty, a somber dream in his eyes, a statuesque quality in his pose. ”

“ It was all glorious beyond words, to the imaginative girl. It flooded her with color, beauty, youth, poetry, music. Every gleaming neck or flashing eye, every lithe man's body, every lover's deferential droop of head, every woman's worshipful upturned glance, came to her with power to arouse and transform. The like of this she had not dreamed of seeing.
Nobody had told her of this Chicago. Nobody could tell her of it, indeed, for no one else saw it as she did. When Mason spoke again his voice was very low and gentle. He began to comprehend the soul of the girl. ”

“ At his word a vision of the plain, and the significance of its life, rushed over Ida—the serene majesty of the stars, the splendor and unused wealth of the prairies, the barriers to their use, the limitless robbery of the poor, in both city and country, the pathetic homes of the renter.
"Oh, the pathos, the tragedy of it all! Nature is so good and generous, and poverty so universal. Can it be remedied? It must be remedied. Every thinking, sympathizing soul must help us."
Bradley's voice touched Ida deeply as he said, slowly: "Henceforward I shall work for these people and all who suffer. ”

“ A solemn-visaged colored man—not the officious usher of the night before—took his card and led him into a gorgeous, glacial reception-room on the left. The house was very still and cold and gloomy, for the day was darkening and the lights were not yet on. It impressed him as a vast and splendid tomb, and with a revived knowledge of Simeon Pratt's tragic history he chilled with a premonition of some approaching shadow. "What a contrast to the sunlit cabin of the Colorow!" he inwardly exclaimed, and the thought of the mountain girl housed in this grim and sepulchral mansion deepened his wonder. ”

“ The outlaw stepped to the door, and he saw a man at the head of his train mid-leg deep in snow, leading his horse, breaking the way for his followers, who were all on foot, crawling, stumbling, and twisting among the down-timber, unmindful of the old trail.
At sight of that big and resolute leader, with flowing black beard and ruddy face, the outlaw was filled with jealous sadness. To find Ward a man of superb physical prowess, the kind that measures peaks for the fun of it, was disturbing, and without defining his feeling he was plunged into melancholy musing. ”

“ In the stress of his work the glamour had utterly died out of Douglass's conception of Helen, just as the lurid light of her old-time advertising had faded from the bill-boards and from the window displays of Broadway. As cold, black, and gray instantaneous photographs had taken the place of the gorgeous, jewel-bedecked, elaborate lithographs of the old plays, so now his thought of her was without warmth.
Helen became aware, too, of an outside change. Her friends used this as a further warning.
"You are becoming commonplace to the public," one said, with a touch of bitterness. ”

“ In the bright winter morning, seated in a gay cutter behind a bay colt strung with slashing bells, Mattie drove to Kesota for the doctor. She felt the discord between the joyous jangle of the bells, the stream of sunlight, and the sparkle of snow crystals, but it only added to the poignancy of her anxiety.
She had not yet reached self-consciousness in her regard for the young preacher—she thought of him as a noble human being liable to death, and she chirped again and again to the flying colt, whose broad hoofs flung the snow in stinging showers against her face. ”

“ A world of plenty; leather for all the world from the buffalo of the plains; hardwood timber without end to the eastward; free grass for fifty million cows; meat for the nation from the antelope of the plains and the elk and mule deer of the hills; wealth untold for those who would seek for it and burrow in the ground for gold; and in this great untouched forest of the northwest coast was enough lumber to roof the earth. He smiled and slapped the brown mare on the neck as a whimsical thought crossed his mind. ”

“ On the prairie, as on the sea, one studies little else. There was something formidable in every sign. In the west a prodigious dome of blue-black cloud was rising, ragged at the edge, but dense and compact at the horizon.
"That means business," Rivers said to himself, and chirped to his team.
The air was close and hot. The southern wind had died away. There was scarcely a sound in all the landscape save the regular clucking of the wagon-wheels, the soft, rhythmical tread of the horses' feet, and the snapping buzz of the grasshoppers rising from the weeds. ”

“ As Belden neared them Norcross also perceived that the rider’s face was distorted with passion, and that his glance was not directed upon Berrie, but upon himself, and he braced himself for the attack.
Leaving his saddle with one flying leap, which the cowboy practises at play, Belden hurled himself upon his rival with the fury of a panther.
The slender youth went down before the big rancher as though struck by a catapult; and the force of his fall against the stony earth stunned him so that he lay beneath his enemy as helpless as a child. ”

“ Windows of sick-rooms are opened, the merry small boy goes to school without his tippet, and men lay off their long ulsters for their beaver coats. Caps give place to hats, and men and women pause to chat when they meet each other on the street. The open door is the sign of the great change of wind.
There are imaginative souls who are stirred yet deeper by this wind—men like Robert Bloom, to whom come vague and very sweet reminiscences of farm life when the snow is melting and the dry ground begins to appear. To these people the wind comes from the wide unending spaces of the prairie west. ”

“ I can see the great judgment angel now!" he said, stopping suddenly and pointing above the stove-pipe. "I can see him as he stands weighing your souls as a man 'ud weigh wheat and chaff. Wheat goes into the Father's garner; chaff is blown to hell's devouring flame! I can see him now! He seizes a poor, damned, struggling soul by the neck, he holds him over the flaming forge of hell till his bones melt like wax; he shrivels like thread in a flame of a candle; he is nothing but a charred husk, and the angel flings him back into outer darkness; life was not in him." ”

“ As I look back over my life on that Iowa farm the song of the reaper fills large place in my mind. We were all worshippers of wheat in those days. The men thought and talked of little else between seeding and harvest, and you will not wonder at this if you have known and bowed down before such abundance as we then enjoyed.
Deep as the breast of a man, wide as the sea, heavy-headed, supple-stocked, many-voiced, full of multitudinous, secret, whispered colloquies,—a meeting place of winds and of sunlight,—our fields ran to the world's end. ”