and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that
he could not bear to become also such a clod. Although
in his absorption in himself and in his own destiny he
was blind to the fact that his young wife was doing a
strong woman's work even after she had become large
with child and that she was killing herself in his
service, he did not intend to be unkind to her. When
his father, who was old and twisted with toil, made
over to him the ownership of the farm and seemed
content to creep away to a corner and wait for death,
he shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the old man
from his mind.

In the room by the window overlooking the land that had
come down to him sat Jesse thinking of his own affairs.
In the stables he could hear the tramping of his horses
and the restless movement of his cattle. Away in the
fields he could see other cattle wandering over green
hills. The voices of men, his men who worked for him,
came in to him through the window. From the milkhouse
there was the steady thump, thump of a churn being
manipulated by the half-witted girl, Eliza Stoughton.
Jesse's mind went back to the men of Old Testament days
who had also owned lands and herds. He remembered how
God had come down out of the skies and talked to these
men and he wanted God to notice and to talk to him
also. A kind of feverish boyish eagerness to in some
way achieve in his own life the flavor of significance
that had hung over these men took possession of him.
Being a prayerful man he spoke of the matter aloud to
God and the sound of his own words strengthened and fed
his eagerness.

"I am a new kind of man come into possession of these
fields," he declared. "Look upon me, O God, and look
Thou also upon my neighbors and all the men who have
gone before me here! O God, create in me another Jesse,
like that one of old, to rule over men and to be the
father of sons who shall be rulers!" Jesse grew excited
as he talked aloud and jumping to his feet walked up
and down in the room. In fancy he saw himself living in
old times and among old peoples. The land that lay
stretched out before him became of vast significance, a
place peopled by his fancy with a new race of men
sprung from himself. It seemed to him that in his day
as in those other and older days, kingdoms might be
created and new impulses given to the lives of men by
the power of God speaking through a chosen servant. He
longed to be such a servant. "It is God's work I have