As he sat on his steel seat and watched the
colter cut the firm sod with brittle cracking sound as it snapped the
tough roots of the wild roses, or looking back saw the regular terraces
of shiny black mould which marked his progress, he felt that he was
engaged in a rite of almost sacramental significance.

"To take a substance straight from the hand of the Creator and be the
first in all the world to impose a human will upon it is surely an
occasion for solemnity and thanksgiving," he soliloquized. "How can
anyone be so gross as to see only materialism in such work as this?
Surely it has something of fundamental religion in it! Just as from the
soil springs all physical life, may it not be that deep down in the soil
are, some way, the roots of the spiritual? The soil feeds the city in
two ways; it fills its belly with material food, and it is continually
re-vitalizing its spirit with fresh streams of energy which can come
only from the land. Up from the soil comes all life, all progress, all
development--"

At that moment Grant's plowshare struck a submerged boulder, and he was
dumped precipitately into that element which he had been so generously
apostrophizing. The well-trained horses came to a stop as he gathered
himself up, none the worse, and regained his seat.

"That WAS a spill," he commented. "Ditched not only myself, but my whole
train of thought. Never mind; perhaps I was dangerously close to the
development of a new whim, and I am well supplied in that particular
already. Hello, whom have we here?"

The horses had come to a stop a short distance before the end of the
furrow, and Grant, glancing ahead, saw immediately in front of them a
little chap of four or five obstructing the way. He stood astride of
the furrow with widespread legs bridging the distance from the virgin
prairie to the upturned sod. He was hatless, and curls of silky yellow
hair fell about his round, bright face. His hands were stuck obtrusively
in his trouser pockets.

"Well, son, what's the news?" said Grant, when the two had measured each
other for a moment.

"I got braces," the boy replied proudly. "Don't you see?"

"Why, so you have!" Grant exclaimed. "Come around here until I see them
better."

So encouraged, the little chap came skipping around the horses, and
exhibited his braces for Grant's admiration. But he had already become
interested in another subject.

"Are these your horses?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"Will they