Project Gutenberg's The Troll Garden and Selected Stories, by Willa Cather

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Title: The Troll Garden and Selected Stories

Author: Willa Cather

Release Date: October, 1995 [Etext #346]
Posting Date: November 10, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TROLL GARDEN ***

Produced by Judith Boss

THE TROLL GARDEN

AND

SELECTED STORIES

By Willa Cather

Contents

_Selected Stories_

On the Divide
Eric Hermannson's Soul
The Enchanted Bluff
The Bohemian Girl

_The Troll Garden_

Flavia and Her Artists
The Sculptor's Funeral
"A Death in the Desert"
The Garden Lodge
The Marriage of Phaedra
A Wagner Matinee
Paul's Case

SELECTED STORIES

On the Divide

Near Rattlesnake Creek, on the side of a little draw stood Canute's
shanty. North, east, south, stretched the level Nebraska plain of long
rust-red grass that undulated constantly in the wind. To the west the
ground was broken and rough, and a narrow strip of timber wound along
the turbid, muddy little stream that had scarcely ambition enough to
crawl over its black bottom. If it had not been for the few stunted
cottonwoods and elms that grew along its banks, Canute would have shot
himself years ago. The Norwegians are a timber-loving people, and if
there is even a turtle pond with a few plum bushes around it they seem
irresistibly drawn toward it.

As to the shanty itself, Canute had built it without aid of any kind,
for when he first squatted along the banks of Rattlesnake Creek there
was not a human being within twenty miles. It was built of logs split
in halves, the chinks stopped with mud and plaster. The roof was covered
with earth and was supported by one gigantic beam curved in the shape of
a round arch. It was almost impossible that any tree had ever grown in
that shape. The Norwegians used to say that Canute had taken the log
across his knee and bent it into the shape he wished. There were
two rooms, or rather there was one room with a partition made of ash
saplings interwoven and bound together like big straw basket work. In
one corne