The Project Gutenberg EBook of Other Main-Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland

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Title: Other Main-Travelled Roads

Author: Hamlin Garland

Release Date: March 1, 2007 [EBook #20714]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: DADDY DEERING]

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OTHER MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS

HAMLIN GARLAND
SUNSET EDITION

HARPER & BROTHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

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COPYRIGHT, 1892, 1899, 1910, BY HAMLIN GARLAND

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PRAIRIE FOLKS

PIONEERS

They rise to mastery of wind and snow;
They go like soldiers grimly into strife,
To colonize the plain; they plough and sow,
And fertilize the sod with their own life
As did the Indian and the buffalo.

SETTLERS

Above them soars a dazzling sky,
In winter blue and clear as steel,
In summer like an arctic sea
Wherein vast icebergs drift and reel
And melt like sudden sorcery.

Beneath them plains stretch far and fair,
Rich with sunlight and with rain;
Vast harvests ripen with their care
And fill with overplus of grain
Their square, great bins.

Yet still they strive! I see them rise
At dawn-light, going forth to toil:
The same salt sweat has filled my eyes,
My feet have trod the self-same soil
Behind the snarling plough.

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PREFACE

Nearly all the stories in this volume were written at the same time and
under the same impulse as those which compose its companion volume,
_Main-Travelled Roads_--and the entire series was the result of a
summer-vacation visit to my old home in Iowa, to my father's farm in
Dakota, and, last of all, to my birthplace in Wisconsin. This happened
in 1887. I was living at the time in Boston, and had not seen the West
for several years, and my return to the scenes of