O Pioneers!

personal about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink into himself as he used to do; to hold himself away

were fine, relentless lines about his eyes. His back, with its high, sharp shoulders, looked like the

of castor beans in the middle of the flower garden. The gravel paths g

way engraving other men's pictures, and you've stayed at home and made your own." He pointed with his c

f, and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still. As for me, you remember when I began to buy land. For years after that I was always squeezing and borrowing until I was ashamed to show my face in th

diffe

too; on the outside Emil is just like an American boy, - he graduated from the State University in June, you know, - but underneath

to farm her

d for. Sometimes he talks about studying law, and sometimes, just lately, he's been talking about going out into the sand hills and

Oscar? They've done

heir own way of doing things, and they do not altogether like my way, I am afraid. Perhaps they think me too independent. But I have had to think for myself a good many y

even think I liked the old country better. This is all very splendid in its way, but there was something about this country when it was a wild old beast that has haunted me all th

many of our old neighbors." Alexandra paused and looked up thoughtfully at the

y two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened be

You must remember her, little Marie Tovesky, from Omaha, who used to visit here? When she was eighteen she ran away from the convent school and got married, crazy child! She came out here a bride, with her father and husband. H

nk her

e was little. Sometimes I go up to the Catholic church with Emil, and it's funny to see Marie standing there laughing and shaking hands with people, looking so excited and gay, with Frank sulking behind her as if he could eat everybody alive. Frank

ssful at that kind of thing, Alexandra

so much older and slower. But she's the kind that won't be downed easily. She'll work all day and go to a Bohemian wedding and dance all night, and drive the hay wagon

I must see the old place. I'm cowardly about things that remind me of myself. It took courag

s. "Why do you dread things like that, Carl?" she ask

efore I began. Everything's cheap metal work nowadays, touching up miserable photographs, forcing up poor drawings, and spoiling good ones. I'm absolutely sick of it all." Carl frowned. "Alexandra, all the way out from New York I've been planning how I could deceiv

u see," he went on calmly, "measured by your standards here, I'm a failure. I couldn't buy even o

f, Carl. I'd rather have had

nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our ren

Emil grow up like that than like his two brothers. We pay a high rent, too, though we pay differently. We grow hard and heavy here. We don't move lightly and easily as you do, and our minds get stiff. If the world

ou feel like th

n't see the use of it. After she had tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got worried and sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she's come back she's been perfectly cheerful, and she says she's cont