new clearings ragged with small stumps. The first generation are alien
and forlorn. The echoing fjords of Trondhjem and the moors of Finmark
have clipped their imaginations, silenced their laughter, hidden with
ice their real tenderness. In America they go sedulously to the bare
Lutheran church and frequently drink ninety-per-cent. alcohol. They
are also heroes, and have been the makers of a new land, from the days
of Indian raids and ox-teams and hillside dug-outs to now, repeating
in their patient hewing the history of the Western Reserve.... In one
generation or even in one decade they emerge from the desolation of
being foreigners. They, and the Germans, pay Yankee mortgages with
blood and sweat. They swiftly master politics, voting for honesty
rather than for hand-shakes; they make keen, scrupulously honest
business deals; send their children to school; accumulate land--one
section, two sections--or move to town to keep shop and ply skilled
tools; become Methodists and Congregationalists; are neighborly with
Yankee manufacturers and doctors and teachers; and in one generation,
or less, are completely American.

So was it with Carl Ericson. His carpenter father had come from
Norway, by way of steerage and a farm in Wisconsin, changing his name
from Ericsen. Ericson senior owned his cottage and, though he still
said, "Aye ban going," he talked as naturally of his own American
tariff and his own Norwegian-American Governor as though he had five
generations of Connecticut or Virginia ancestry.

Now, it was Carl's to go on, to seek the flowering.

* * * * *

Unconscious that he was the heir-apparent of the age, but decidedly
conscious that the woodshed was dark, Carl finished the pile.

From the step of the woodshed he regarded the world with plaintive
boredom.

"Ir-r-r-r-rving!" he called.

No answer from Irving, the next-door boy.

The village was rustlingly quiet. Carl skipped slowly and unhappily to
the group of box-elders beside the workshop and stuck his finger-nails
into the cobwebby crevices of the black bark. He made overtures for
company on any terms to a hop-robin, a woolly worm, and a large blue
fly, but they all scorned his advances, and when he yelled an
ingratiating invitation to a passing dog it seemed to swallow its tail
and ears as it galloped off. No one else appeared.

Before the kitchen window he quavered:

"Ma-ma!"

In the kitchen, the muffled pounding