splendid in
the "breaking" season. Smooth, glossy, almost unwrinkled the thick
ribbon of jet-black sod rose upon the share and rolled away from the
mold-board's glistening curve to tuck itself upside down into the furrow
behind the horse's heels, and the picture which my uncle made, gave me
pleasure in spite of the sad changes he was making.

The land was not all clear prairie and every ounce of David's great
strength was required to guide that eighteen-inch plow as it went
ripping and snarling through the matted roots of the hazel thickets, and
sometimes my father came and sat on the beam in order to hold the
coulter to its work, while the giant driver braced himself to the shock
and the four horses strained desperately at their traces. These contests
had the quality of a wrestling match but the men always won. My own job
was to rake and burn the brush which my father mowed with a heavy
scythe.--Later we dug postholes and built fences but each day was spent
on the new land.

Around us, on the swells, gray gophers whistled, and the nesting plover
quaveringly called. Blackbirds clucked in the furrow and squat badgers
watched with jealous eye the plow's inexorable progress toward their
dens. The weather was perfect June. Fleecy clouds sailed like snowy
galleons from west to east, the wind was strong but kind, and we worked
in a glow of satisfied ownership.

Many rattlesnakes ("massasaugas" Mr. Button called them), inhabited the
moist spots and father and I killed several as we cleared the ground.
Prairie wolves lurked in the groves and swales, but as foot by foot and
rod by rod, the steady steel rolled the grass and the hazel brush under,
all of these wild things died or hurried away, never to return. Some
part of this tragedy I was able even then to understand and regret.

At last the wide "quarter section" lay upturned, black to the sun and
the garden that had bloomed and fruited for millions of years, waiting
for man, lay torn and ravaged. The tender plants, the sweet flowers, the
fragrant fruits, the busy insects, all the swarming lives which had been
native here for untold centuries were utterly destroyed. It was sad and
yet it was not all loss, even to my thinking, for I realized that over
this desolation the green wheat would wave and the corn silks shed their
pollen. It was not precisely the romantic valley of our song, but it was
a rich and promiseful plot and my father seemed entirely content.

Meanwhile, o