So Big

COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT, 1923, 1924, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PR...

Selina rallied to Julie’s onslaught. “Then I’ll just teach a country school. I’m good at arithmetic. You know that.” Julie should have known it, having had all her Fister sums s...

A narrow, dim, close-smelling hallway, uncarpeted. At the end of it a door opening into the room that was to be Selina’s. As its chill struck her to the marrow three objects cau...

The glow that warmed her now endured while she splashed about in the inadequate basin; took down the dark soft masses of her hair; put on the voluminous long-sleeved, high-necke...

On her fifth Sunday in the district she accompanied the Pools to the morning service at the Dutch Reformed Church. Maartje seldom had the time for such frivolity. But on this mo...

Scarlet, flooding her face, belied the widow’s outward air of composure. Pervus DeJong, standing beside Selina, viewed the proceedings with an air of detachment. High Prairie wa...

The first week in March he was ill, and did not come. A rheumatic affliction to which he was subject. His father, old Johannes DeJong, had had it before him. Working in the wet...

For the rest, the crops were moderately successful on the DeJong place. But the work necessary to make this so was heartbreaking. Pervus and his hired helper, Jan Steen, used th...

High Prairie was kind to the harried household. The farm women sent Dutch dainties. The men lent a hand in the fields, though they were hard put to it to tend their own crops at...

He actually had cleared the patch by three. He went to the well and took a huge draught of water; drank two great dippersful, lipping it down thirstily, like a colt. It was cool...

Selina’s men folks looked up at her—one with the asking eyes of a child, one with the trusting eyes of a dog. “My men folks are going,” answered Selina. But then, they had alway...

Selina stationed herself by her wagon. She saw the familiar faces of a half dozen or more High Prairie neighbours. These called to her, or came over briefly to her wagon, eyeing...

Jan Snip had been rendered speechless. Until the actual arrival of the team and wagon at six he counted them as mysteriously lost and DeJong’s widow clearly gone mad. August Hem...

Selina was rather delighted than otherwise. That, she knew, was the way they did it in England. You sent your son to a university not to cram some technical course into him, or...

Two of Dirk’s classes were conducted by women professors. They were well on toward middle age, or past it; desiccated women. Only their eyes were alive. Their clothes were of so...

“Well, it’s true. All this silly muckraking in the past ten years or more. Poor Father! Of course Grand-dad was pur-ty rough, let me tell you. I read some of the accounts of tha...

“It’s terrible,” she said. “I think there ought to be a Movement for the proper pronunciation. The people ought to be taught; and the children in the schools. They call Goethe S...

She had almost poignantly few personal belongings. Her bureau drawers were like a nun’s; her brush and comb, a scant stock of plain white underwear. On the bathroom shelf her to...

In the midst, then, of this fiery furnace of femininity Dirk walked unscorched. Paula, the North Shore girls, well-bred business and professional women he occasionally met in th...

Dallas O’Mara waved a friendly hand toward some chairs on which were piled hats, odd garments, bristol board and (on the broad arm of one) a piece of yellow cake. “Sit down.” Sh...

North Shore hostesses vied for the honour of entertaining these notables. Paula—pretty, clever, moneyed, shrewd—often emerged from these contests the winner. Her latest catch wa...

There is a vitality about Edna Ferber that is recognizable the moment she comes into a room. She enters almost with a rush, with a quick, firm step; though she is short, scarcel...