Alice Brown

“ For the first ten miles of the way, familiar in being the road to market, Eli was placidly cheerful. The sense that he was going to do some strange deed, to step into an unknown country, dropped away from him, and he chatted, in his intermittent, serious way, of the crops and the lay of the land.
"Pretty bad job up along here, ain't it, father?" called Sereno, as they passed a sterile pasture which two plodding men and a yoke of oxen were redeeming from its rocky fetters.
"There 's a good deal of pastur' in some places that ain't fit for nothin' but to hold the world together," returned Eli ”

“ There were always planting, haying, and harvesting to be considered, and though he was fairly prosperous, excursions were foreign to his simple habit of life. But at last his wife had stepped into the van, and organized an expedition, with all the valor of a Sir Francis Drake.
"Now, don't you say one word, father," she had said. "We 're goin' down to the beach, Sereno and Hattie and you and me, and we 're goin' to camp out. It 'll do us all good."
For days before the date of the excursion Eli had been solemn and tremulous, as with joy ”

“ The jogging horses left behind their lazy feet a suffocating cloud.
"My land!" said Mrs. Pike, "if that ain't goldenrod! I do believe it comes earlier every year, or else the seasons are changin'. See them elderberries! Ain't they purple! ”

“ He nodded from the window where he was patiently holding his head high and undergoing strangulation, while his wife, breathing huskily with haste and importance, put on his stock.
"You come in, Hattie, and help pack the doughnuts into that lard-pail on the table," she called. "I guess you 'll have to take two pails. They ain't very big."
At length the two teams were ready, and Eli mounted to his place, where he looked very slender beside his towering mate. The hired man stood leaning on the pump, chewing a bit of straw, and the cats rubbed against his legs, with tails like banners ”