ent it proved to
be a book of "Devotional and Kindred Poems; by Mrs. Aurelia S. Larsen."
He looked them over, thinking that the world changed very little. He
could remember when the wife of his father's minister had published a
volume of verses, which all the church members had to buy and all the
children were encouraged to read. His grandfather had made a face at the
book and said, "Puir body!" Both ladies seemed to have chosen the same
subjects, too: Jephthah's Daughter, Rizpah, David's Lament for Absalom,
etc. The doctor found the book very amusing.

The Reverend Lars Larsen was a reactionary Swede. His father came to
Iowa in the sixties, married a Swedish girl who was ambitious, like
himself, and they moved to Kansas and took up land under the Homestead
Act. After that, they bought land and leased it from the Government,
acquired land in every possible way. They worked like horses, both of
them; indeed, they would never have used any horse-flesh they owned as
they used themselves. They reared a large family and worked their sons
and daughters as mercilessly as they worked themselves; all of them but
Lars. Lars was the fourth son, and he was born lazy. He seemed to bear
the mark of overstrain on the part of his parents. Even in his cradle he
was an example of physical inertia; anything to lie still. When he was a
growing boy his mother had to drag him out of bed every morning, and he
had to be driven to his chores. At school he had a model "attendance
record," because he found getting his lessons easier than farm work. He
was the only one of the family who went through the high school, and by
the time he graduated he had already made up his mind to study for the
ministry, because it seemed to him the least laborious of all callings.
In so far as he could see, it was the only business in which there was
practically no competition, in which a man was not all the time pitted
against other men who were willing to work themselves to death. His
father stubbornly opposed Lars's plan, but after keeping the boy at home
for a year and finding how useless he was on the farm, he sent him to a
theological seminary--as much to conceal his laziness from the neighbors
as because he did not know what else to do with him.

Larsen, like Peter Kronborg, got on well in the ministry, because he got
on well with the women. His English was no worse than that of most young
preachers of American parentage, and he made the most of his skill wi