's
up, boys. Grab a root!"

And so, lame, stiff and sore, with the sinews of my legs shortened, so
that my knees were bent like an old man's, I hobbled away to the barn
and took charge of my team. Once in the field, I felt better. A subtle
change, a mellower charm came over the afternoon earth. The ground was
warmer, the sky more genial, the wind more amiable, and before I had
finished my second "round" my joints were moderately pliable and my
sinews relaxed.

Nevertheless the temptation to sit on the corner of the harrow and dream
the moments away was very great, and sometimes as I laid my tired body
down on the tawny, sunlit grass at the edge of the field, and gazed up
at the beautiful clouds sailing by, I wished for leisure to explore
their purple valleys.--The wind whispered in the tall weeds, and sighed
in the hazel bushes. The dried blades touching one another in the
passing winds, spoke to me, and the gophers, glad of escape from their
dark, underground prisons, chirped a cheery greeting. Such respites were
strangely sweet.

So day by day, as I walked my monotonous round upon the ever mellowing
soil, the prairie spring unrolled its beauties before me. I saw the last
goose pass on to the north, and watched the green grass creeping up the
sunny slopes. I answered the splendid challenge of the loitering crane,
and studied the ground sparrow building her grassy nest. The prairie
hens began to seek seclusion in the swales, and the pocket gopher,
busily mining the sod, threw up his purple-brown mounds of cool fresh
earth. Larks, blue-birds and king-birds followed the robins, and at last
the full tide of May covered the world with luscious green.

Harriet and Frank returned to school but I was too valuable to be
spared. The unbroken land of our new farm demanded the plow and no
sooner was the planting on our rented place finished than my father
began the work of fencing and breaking the sod of the homestead which
lay a mile to the south, glowing like a garden under the summer sun. One
day late in May my uncle David (who had taken a farm not far away),
drove over with four horses hitched to a big breaking plow and together
with my father set to work overturning the primeval sward whereon we
were to be "lords of the soil."

I confess that as I saw the tender plants and shining flowers bow
beneath the remorseless beam, civilization seemed a sad business, and
yet there was something epic, something large-gestured and