, bade good-by to Magnus Thorkelson, drove my outfit
up on the "building-spot," and camped right where my biggest silo now
stands. I sat there all the afternoon, not even unhitching my teams,
listening as the afternoon drew on toward night, to the bitterns crying
"plum pudd'n'" from the marsh, to the queer calls of the water-rail, and
to the long-drawn "whe-e-ep--whe-e-e-ew!" of the curlews, as they
alighted on the prairie and stretched their wings up over their backs.
I could never be much of a man, I thought, on a forty-acre farm, nor
build much of a house. I had come all the way from York State for this!
The bubble had grown brighter and brighter as I had made my strange way
across the new lands, putting on more and more of the colors of the
rainbow, and now, all had ended in this spot of water on the floor of
the earth. I compared myself with the Fewkeses, as I remembered how I
had told Virginia just how the rooms of the house should be arranged,
and allowed her to change the arrangement whenever she desired, and even
to put great white columns in front as she said they did in Kentucky. We
had agreed as to just what trees should be set out, and what flowers
should be planted in the blue-grass lawn.
All this was gone glimmering now--and yet as I sit here, there are the
trees, and there are the flowers, very much as planned, in the soft
blue-grass lawn; about the only thing lacking being the white columns.
I was lying on the ground, looking out across the marsh, and as my
misfortunes all rolled back over my mind I turned on my face and cried
like a baby.
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