Hamlin Garland

“ Ben rose to go over where the girl was and the others followed.
A young man seated by the struggling sinner held her hand and fanned her with his hat, while some girl friends, scared and sobbing, kept the tossing limbs covered. She rolled from side to side restlessly, thrusting forth her tongue as if her throat were dry. She looked like a dying animal.
Maud clung to Milton.
"Oh, can't something be done?"
"Her soul is burdened for you!" cried a wild old woman to the impassive youth who clung to the frenzied girl's hand. ”

“ But the wind kissed her drawn lips as readily as those of the girl, and the blooms of clover nodded to her as if to a queen.
Lily had said all she could. Her heart ached with unspeakable pity and a sort of terror.
"Don't give up, Lucretia. This may be the worst hour of your life. Live and bear with it all for Christ's sake,—for your children's sake. Sim told me to tell you he was to blame. If you will only see that you are both to blame and yet neither to blame, then you can rise above it. ”

“ When he saw and heard Bacon, his hurt pride flamed up in wrath, but the calm voice of Radbourn, and the look in his stern, accusing eyes, made his head fall in thought. As he rode, things grew clearer. As a matter of fact, his whole system of religious thought was like the side of a shelving sand-bank—in unstable equilibrium—needing only a touch to send it slipping into a shapeless pile at the river's edge. That touch had been given, and he was now in the midst of the motion of his falling faith. ”

“ The blacks broke wildly, but, strange to say, the old sorrel increased his speed. Again Brann struck, but the lash fell on Bert's outstretched wrists. He did not see that the blacks were crowding him to the gutter, but he heard a warning cry.
"Look out, there!"
Before he could turn to look, the cutter seemed to be blown up by a bomb. He rose in the air like a vaulter, and when he fell the light went out.
The next that he heard was a curious soft murmur of voices, out of which a sweet, agonized girl-voice broke:
"Oh, where's the doctor? He's dead—oh, he's dead! Can't you hurry?" ”

“ The girl shivered with emotion. He seemed to recede from her as he spoke, and to grow larger, too. Such nobility of purpose was new and splendid to her.
The revival was wondrously dramatic. The little schoolhouse was crowded to the doors night by night. The reek of stable-stained coats and boots, the smell of strong tobacco, the effluvia of many breaths, the heat, the closeness were forgotten in the fervor of the young evangelist's utterances. His voice took on wild emotional cadences which sounded deep places in the heart. ”

“ The wondering children obeyed—some with glad promptness, others with sadness, for they had already come to like their teacher very much.
As he sat by the door and watched them file out, it was as if he were a king abdicating a throne, and these his faithful subjects.
Mrs. Allen came over with Mattie to see him that day. She was a good woman, gentle and prayerful, and she said, with much emotion:
"Oh, Mr. Stacey, I do hope you can patch things up here. If you could only touch his heart! He don't mean to do wrong, but he's so set in his ways—if he says a thing he sticks to it." ”

“ As for Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked at this peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tender girl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets. She felt, sympathetically, the heat and grime, and, though but the faintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, she shuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things by Radbourn, a classmate at the Seminary. ”

“ Lime was going out of the gate.
"Here! Come and get y'r money," yelled the old man, extending some bills. "Here's twenty—"
"Go to thunder with your money," retorted Lime. "I've had my pay for my month's work." As he said that, he thought of the sunny kitchen and the merry girl, and his throat choked. Good-by to the sweet girl whose smile was so much to him, and to the happy noons and nights her eyes had made for him. ”

“ The sheds were rebuilt by men whose hearts glowed with old-time fire. It was like pioneer days, when "barn-raisings" and "bees" made life worth while in a wild, stern land. The old men were moved to tears, and the younger rough men shouted cheery, boisterous cries to hide their own deep emotion. Hand met hand in heartiness never shown before. Neighbors frequented one another's homes, and the old times of visiting and brotherly love came back upon them. Nothing marred the perfect beauty of their revival—save the fear of its evanescence. ”

“ She hardly felt as if the tall, strong girl, attractive with health and hope, could be the same soul as the woman who now sat in utter despair listening to the heavy breathing of the happy cows, grateful for the relief from their burden of milk. ”

“ Before he could rise he heard swift feet and a merry voice and Marietta burst through the door.
"Hello, Pap! How you makin' out with break—" She saw a look on his face that went to her heart like a knife. She saw a lonely and deserted old man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again and again, while Mr. John Jennings and his wife stood in the door.
"Poor ol' Pap! Merry couldn't leave you. She's come back to stay as long as he lives." ”

“ Wide wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A night of Nature's making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.
And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.
IV
The following Saturday afternoon, as Ridgeley and Field entered the office, Williams rose to meet them. He looked different—finer some way, Field imagined. At any rate, he was perfectly sober. He was freshly shaven, and though his clothes were rough, he appeared the man of education he really was. ”

“ Accordingly, that evening a party of students, in a large sleigh, drove out toward the schoolhouse, along the drifted lanes and through the beautiful aisles of the snowy woods. A merry party of young people, who had no sense of sin to weigh them down. Even Radbourn and Lily joined in the songs which they sang to the swift clanging of the bells, until the lights of the schoolhouse burned redly through the frosty air. ”

“ As a Western boy, Boston to him was historic, New York was the great metropolis, but Washington was the great American city, and political greatness the only fame.
The car was nearly empty: save here and there the wide-awake Western drummer, and a woman with four fretful children, the train was as deserted as it was frightfully cold. The engine shrieked warningly at intervals, the train rumbled hollowly over short bridges144 and across pikes, swung round the hills, and plunged with wild warnings past little towns hid in the snow, with only here and there a light shining dimly. ”

“ 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 the 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. ”

“ Here and there a sawmill stood gray and sagging, surrounded by little cabins of unpainted wood, to testify to the time when great pines stood all about, and the ring of the swamper's axe was heard in the intervals of silence between the howls of a saw.
To the north the swells grew larger. Birch and tamarack swamps alternated with dry ridges on which an inferior pine still grew. The swamps were dense tangles of broken and uprooted trees. Slender pike-like stumps of fire-devastated firs rose here and there, black and grim skeletons of trees. ”

“ Ben arose a little later on Sunday morning than on weekdays, but there were the chores to do as usual. The horses must be watered, fed, and curried, and the cows were to milk, but after breakfast Ben threw off the cares of the hired hand. When he came down from the little garret into which the hot August sun streamed redly, he was a changed creature. Clean from tip to toe, newly shaven, wearing a crackling white shirt, a linen collar and a new suit of store clothes, he felt himself a man again, fit to meet maidens. ”

“ In the warm kitchen into which they came he lost something of his spiritual tension, and became more humanly aware of the significance of sitting again with these people. He gave the girl his coat and hat, and then watched her slip off her knitted hood and her cloak. Her eyes shone with returning laughter, and her cheeks were flushed with blood.
Looking upon her, the young evangelist lost his look of exaltation, his eyes grew soft and his limbs relaxed. ”

“ At the junction the car became pretty well filled with people. Two or three Norwegian families came clattering in, the mothers clothed in heavy shawls and cheap straw hats, the flaxen-haired children in faded cottonade and blue denims. They filled nearly half the seats. Several drummers came in, laughing loudly, bearing heavy valises. Then Allen heard, above the noise, the shrill but sweet voice of a girl, and caught the odor of violets as two persons passed him and took a seat just before him. ”

“ Albert sank into a feverish sleep that night, with a vague perception of four figures in the room—Maud, her mother, Hartley, and the young doctor. When he awoke fully in the morning his head felt prodigiously hot and heavy.180
It was early dawn, and the lamp was burning brightly. Outside, a man's feet could be heard on the squealing snow—a sound which told how still and cold it was. A team passed with a jingle of bells. ”

“ Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early girlhood, and now she was middle-aged, distorted with work and child-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders that lay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large white cow. ”