umming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall grasses
wave. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through
my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons
around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I
kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything
to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the
pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy.
Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something
entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any
rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and
great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

III

ON SUNDAY MORNING Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the
acquaintance of our new Bohemian neighbours. We were taking them some
provisions, as they had come to live on a wild place where there was no
garden or chicken-house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up
a sack of potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and
grandmother packed some loaves of Saturday's bread, a jar of butter, and
several pumpkin pies in the straw of the wagon-box. We clambered up to
the front seat and jolted off past the little pond and along the road
that climbed to the big cornfield.

I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but there
was only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the high
wagon-seat one could look off a long way. The road ran about like a wild
thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide and
shallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the sunflowers
grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great rough leaves
and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made a gold ribbon
across the prairie. Occasionally one of the horses would tear off with
his teeth a plant full of blossoms, and walk along munching it, the
flowers nodding in time to his bites as he ate down toward them.

The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought
the homestead of a fellow countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid him
more than it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before they
left the old country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relative
of Mrs. Shimerda. The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come
to this part of the county. Krajiek was their only