She--but every boy can go on with the
series: every boy who has been in the hopeless but blissful state in
which I then was: a state which out of hopelessness generates hope as a
dynamo generates current.
This was followed by days of dark despondency. Magnus Thorkelson and I
were working together plowing for oats, for we did not work our oats on
the corn ground of last year then as we do now, and he tried to cheer me
up. I had been wishing that I had never left the canal; for there I
always had good clothes and money in my pocket. We couldn't stay in this
country, I said. Nobody had any money except a few money sharks, and
they robbed every one that borrowed of them with their two per cent, a
month. I was getting raggeder and raggeder every day. I wished I had not
bought this other eighty. I wished I had done anything rather than what
I had done. I wished I knew where I could get work at fair wages, and I
would let the farm go--I would that! I would be gosh-blasted if I
wouldn't, by Golding's bow-key[15]!
[15] "By Golding's bow-key" was a very solemn objurgation. It could be
used by professors of religion, but under great provocation only. It
harks back to the time when every man who had oxen named them Buck and
Golding, and the bow-key held the yoke on. Ah, those far-off, Arcadian
days, and the blessing of blowing those who lived in them!--G.v.d.M.
"Oh!" exclaimed Magnus, "you shouldn't talk so! Ve got plenty to eat.
Dere bane lots people in Norvay would yump at de shance to yange places
wit' us.
Pages:
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321