making them
possible.

Slowly but steadily Susan Garland's vital forces died out, and at last
there came a morning when her breath faltered on her lips. She had gone
away, as she had lived, with quiet dignity. Notwithstanding her almost
constant suffering she had always been a calmly cheerful soul and her
passing, while it left us serious did not sadden us. Her life came to
its end without struggle and her face was peaceful.

She was the last of my father's immediate family, and to him was
transmitted in due course of law, the estate with which her husband had
left her, a dower, which though small had enabled her to live
independently of her relatives and in simple comfort. It was a matter of
but a few thousand dollars, but its possession now made the most
fundamental change in my father's way of life. The effect of this
certain income upon his character was almost magical. He took on a sense
of security, a feeling of independence, a freedom from worry such as he
had been trying for over sixty years, without success, to attain.

_It released him from the tyranny of the skies._ All his life he had
been menaced by the "weather." Clouds, snows, winds, had been his
unrelenting antagonists. Hardly an hour of his past had been free from a
fear of disaster. The glare of the sun, the direction of the wind, the
assembling of clouds at sunset,--all the minute signs of change, of
storm, of destruction had been his incessant minute study. For over
fifty years he had been enslaved to the seasons. His sister's blessing
liberated him. He agonized no more about the fall of frost, the slash of
hail, the threat of tempest. Neither chinch bugs nor drought nor army
worms could break his rest. He slept in comfort and rose in confidence.
He retained a general interest in crops, of course, but he no longer ate
his bread in fear, and just in proportion as he realized his release
from these corroding, long-endured cares, did he take on mellowness and
humor. He became another man altogether. He ceased to worry and hurry.
His tone, his manner became those of a citizen of substance, of genial
leisure. He began to speak of travel!

Definitely abandoning all intention of farming, he put his Dakota land
on sale and bought several small cottages in West Salem. As a landlord
in a modest way, he rejoiced in the fact that his income was almost
entirely free from the results of harvest. It irked him (when he thought
of it) to admit that all his pione