Other Main-Travelled Roads

"What do you mean, sir? I am young enough for you, sir. Just let me get ahold o' you, sir, and I'll show you, you young rascal! you dem jackanapes!" he ended, almost shrieking w...

The second Sunday after the partition of goods the entire Coolly turned out to church in spite of the muddy road. The men, after driving up to the door of the little white churc...

She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the tender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there made her eyes fill with tears, and...

To the north the swells grew larger. Birch and tamarack swamps alternated with dry ridges on which an inferior pine still grew. The swamps were dense tangles of broken and uproo...

Bert remarked how much she looked like his own mother in the back. She had the same tired droop in the shoulders, the same colorless dress, characterless with much washing.

The elder's hand hovered over her head, on her face a deadly pallor had settled, her eyes were cast down, she breathed painfully and trembled from head to foot. She was about to...

"I guess ol' Dan's the horse for you. Gentle as a kitten and as knowin' as a fox. Drive him with one hand--left hand." The old man laughed till his long, faded beard flapped up...

"That's right! Now a kiss to bind the bargain. There! What, cryin'? No more o' that, little one. Now I'll give you jest five minutes to git on your Sunday-go-t'-meetin' clo'es....

The train was ambling across the hot, russet plain. The wind, strong and warm and dry, sweeping up from the south, carried with it the subtle odor of September grass and gathere...

The horse took the wrong road, and plodded along steadily, carrying him away from his home, but he did not know it for a long time. When at last he looked up and saw the road le...

"I don't care if they be!" she answered in the same dully irritated way. "What're they comin' here to-day for, I wan' to know." She stayed there immovably, till Mrs. Councill ca...

He thought of her that night, as he sat at the table with Chapman and his aged mother. They lived alone, and their lives were curiously silent. Once in a while a low-voiced ques...

"Well, in my old district they're without a teacher. It's six miles out, and it isn't a lovely neighborhood! However, they will pay fifty dollars a month; that's ten dollars ext...

They rise to mastery of wind and snow; They go like soldiers grimly into strife, To colonize the plain; they plough and sow, And fertilize the sod with their own life As did the...

Everybody noticed the luxury of new dresses on the nieces and the new suits on the children. Everybody knew the feeling which led to these extravagances. Death, after all, was a...

The boy absorbed the light and heat of the sun as some wild thing might. With his hat over his face, his hands folded on his breast, he lay as still as a statue. He did not list...

Shortly after they had settled themselves with elaborate impudence on the back seat, the singing began. Just as they were singing the last verse, every individual voice wavered...

The men ate like hungry dogs. They gorged in silence. Nothing was heard but the clank of knives on tin plates, the drop of heavy platters of food, and the occasional muttered wo...

It was singularly dramatic to the youth. To come from the careless, superficial life of his city companions into contact with such primeval passions as these made him feel like...