A Yankee from the West: A Novel

The neighbors dropped their milk-cans and flocked to the stricken home. A bundle and a walking-stick had been reverently carried to an upper room and placed upon a desk. These r...

Milford was aroused from his dozing by some one walking up and down the veranda. "Don't let me disturb you," a cheery voice cried out, when he got up. "I dropped over to pay you...

It was clearly an insult to ask him to come. They had slandered him, and now they wanted him at their entertainment. He told the boy to tell them that he would not be there. He...

At no time during the lagging winter did the Professor mention his renewed obligation, but one night in April he came over with a tune in his voice, a laugh in his eye, and paid...

Milford took possession of the farm-cottage. The terms were so loose-jointed that the neighbors lamented the old woman's lack of business sense. She told them to keep still. She...

Early the next morning, before the clanging bell had shattered the boarder's dream, the old woman hastened to Milford's cottage. When she surprised him at breakfast, he thought...

In a pelting rain a funeral passed along the road, and a man who had no time for such affairs, hastening with his milk-cans to the railway station, caught sight of Mrs. Stuvic's...

Now and then there was a blustery day, but good weather remained till late in November. But the ground tightened with the cold, and a snow-whirlwind came from the Northwest. Now...

Blakemore came up briskly, shook hands with a quick grasp, looked at his watch and sat down on the edge of the veranda. His eye was no longer fixed and rusty, but bright and res...

Blakemore came out on Sunday morning, snapping his watch and complaining against the pall-bearing march of time. He was full of business. His pockets were stuffed with papers. H...

The hot weather fled before a cool mist that came floating over from Lake Michigan. A cold rain began to fall. Cows lowed, and dogs, soonest of all creatures to feel a change in...

As Milford hastened over the road that led to the Professor's house, a picture thrust itself into his mind, to shorten his stride, to make him slow. He saw the girl's hand held...

Milford was at the dinner table, talking to Blakemore, when a young Norwegian woman entered the room. Blakemore nudged him. He looked up and quickly looked down. He heard a woma...

"No, not till you eat. I never like to choke off a man's appetite. I wouldn't like to have a man choke off mine. I'd be like old Matt Lindsey. The court said he must hang for mu...

Early Tuesday morning a girl from the poor-house went to Mrs. Stuvic's place. This meant that the season was about closed, that the "journeyman" cook had been discharged, the "h...

The neighbors continued to speculate and to ply Mrs. Stuvic with questions concerning Milford. Men who had spent many a rainy day in the hay-mow, gambling, knew that he had play...

In the evening the hired man returned with his trousers drawing shorter every moment. He swore that he was going to kill the peddler, which of course meant that he would buy ano...

Summer was just opening, and there were not many boarders at Mrs. Stuvic's house. But the posting of a railway time-card in the dining-room showed that everything was in readine...

In his mind the traveler holds of Illinois a tiresome picture, the kitchen garden of a great people, a flat and unromantic necessity. The greatest of men have trod the level gro...

When Milford reached Rollins he found the Professor at the station waiting for him. "I will go home with you," he said. "I have something of grave importance to communicate." St...

The days were linked out into weeks; there had been rag-time music and break-down dancing at Mrs. Stuvic's, but Milford had not shown himself. A farmer passing late at night had...

Early the next morning Milford was leading a horse out of the barn when he met the Professor at the door. For a moment the scholar stood puffing the short breath of his haste; h...

Gunhild wrote that she could not spare the money to come out, and to Milford the summer fell flat and lay spiritless on the ground. He begged her to let him bear the expense, an...

The low place where Milford hoed the young corn was not far from Mrs. Stuvic's, and more than once during the forenoon he went to the top of the rise and looked toward the house...

A black-eyed little woman was installed in the house. Accepting her husband's story and her own statement, her life had not been wholly respectable, but she brought refinement i...

A cow that had been hurt by a falling tree went limping down the road, and Milford, looking at her, said that she pictured the passing of time. And when at evening he saw her ag...

A bluster of warm wind brought a thaw, and the ice in the lake was breaking--a disjointing time, a cracking of winter's old bones, a time when being alone we feel less lonely th...

Early the next morning, the Professor hastened from the dining-room to answer a rap at his door. And there stood Milford with a roll of bank notes in his hand.