I am glad I had my share in those
old, sweet, grand, beautiful things--the things which never can
be again.
An old man looks back on things passed through as sufferings, and feels
a thrill when he identifies them as among the splendors of life. Can
anything more clearly prove the vanity of human experiences? But look at
the wonders which have come out of those days. My youth has already
passed into a period as legendary as the days when King Alfred hid in
the swamp and was reproved by the peasant's wife for burning the cakes.
I have lived on my Iowa farm from times of bleak wastes, robber bands,
and savage primitiveness, to this day, when my state is almost as
completely developed as Holland. If I have a pride in it, if I look back
to those days as worthy of record, remember that I have some excuse.
There will be no other generation of human beings with a life so rich in
change and growth. And there never was such a thing in all the history
of the world before.
I knew then, dimly, that what I saw was magnificent; but I was more
pleased with the safety of my farmstead and my stacks than with the grim
glory of the scene; and even as to my own good fortune in coming through
undamaged, I was less concerned than with the tragedy being enacted in
my house. I could not see into the future for Rowena, but I felt that it
would be terrible. The words "lost," "ruined," "outcast," which were
always applied to such as she had become, ran through my mind all the
time; and yet, she seemed a better girl when I talked with her than when
she was running over the prairie like a plover following old Tom and the
little clittering wagon.
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