y from
the heavens; the moon disappeared from the silent night; the silent
night itself fled afar, leaving in its stead a noisy, dirty blackness
through which one slept or yawned as one could. There was the farm, of
course, one could go there and work; but the freshness went out of the
very ground; the crops lost their sweetness and candour; the horses and
cows disowned him; the goats ceased to be his friends--It was all up
with him. He did not whistle any longer. He did not swing his
shoulders as he walked, and, although he continued to smoke, he did not
look for a particular green bank whereon he could sit quietly flooded
with those slow thoughts that had no words.

For he discovered that he had not married a farm at all. He had
married a woman--a thin-jawed, elderly slattern, whose sole beauty was
her farm. How her jaws worked! The processions and congregations of
words that fell and dribbled and slid out of them! Those jaws were
never quiet, and in spite of all he did not say anything. There was
not anything to say, but much to do from which he shivered away in
terror. He looked at her sometimes through the muscles of his arms,
through his big, strong hands, through fogs and fumes and singular,
quiet tumults that raged within him. She lessoned him on the things he
knew so well, and she was always wrong. She lectured him on those
things which she did know, but the unending disquisition, the perpetual
repetition, the foolish, empty emphasis, the dragging weightiness of
her tongue made him repudiate her knowledge and hate it as much as he
did her.

Sometimes, looking at her, he would rub his eyes and yawn with fatigue
and wonder--there she was! A something enwrapped about with
petticoats. Veritably alive. Active as an insect! Palpable to the
touch! And what was she doing to him? Why did she do it? Why didn't
she go away? Why didn't she die? What sense was there in the making
of such a creature that clothed itself like a bolster, without any
freedom or entertainment or shapeliness?

Her eyes were fixed on him and they always seemed to be angry; and her
tongue was uttering rubbish about horses, rubbish about cows, rubbish
about hay and oats. Nor was this the sum of his weariness. It was not
alone that he was married; he was multitudinously, egregiously married.
He had married a whole family, and what a family--

Her mother lived with her, her eldest sister lived with her, her
youngest sister lived with her--and thes