Conrad Richter

That’s how life was, death and birth, grub and harvest, rain and clearing, winter and summer. You had to take one with the other, for that’s the way it ran. The characters and situations in this work are wholly fictional and imaginary, and do not portray and are not intended to portray any actual persons or parties.

As far as the eye could reach, this lonely forest sea rolled on and on till its faint blue billows broke against an incredibly distant horizon.

But what in God's name did folks today want to make the whole world over like they were for? In her time in the woods, everybody she knew was egged on to be his own special self. He could live and think like he wanted to and no two humans you met up with were alike. Each had his own particular beliefs and his reasons for owning to them. Folks were a joy to talk to then, for all were different. Even the simple-minded were original in their own notions. They either mad you laugh or gave you pause. But folks in Americus today seemed mighty tiresome and getting more so. If you saw one, you saw most. If you heard one talk, it's likely you heard the rest. They were creacked on living like everybody else, according to the fashion, and if you were so queer and outlandish as to go your own way and do what you liked, it bothered their 'narve strings' so they were liable to lock you up in one of their newfangled asylums or take you home where they could hold you down to their way of doing...