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Show ! SO BIG I Dy EDNA FERBER V Peaeleday. Fas Co.) ; V wnu Heme. :: '' ,,......,.. . ..... . . three years when there cam t he letter from Julie Hempel, now married. The letter bad been lent to the Klaas Tool (arm and Joxina tiad brought It to ber. Seated on her kitchen steps la her calico dress she read It. "Darling Sellna: "I thuucht it was to queer that you didn't answer my letter, and now 1 know that you must have thought It queer that I did not answer yours. I found your letter to ine, written long ago, when I was going over mother's things last week. It was the letter you must have written when I was In Kansas City. Mother bad never given It to me, "Mamma died three weeks ago. Last week I was going over her things a trying task, you may Imagine and there were your two letters addressed to me. She ha4 never destroyed them. Poor mamma . . . "Well, dear Sellna, I suppose you don't even know that I am married. I married Michael Arnold of Kansas City. The Arnolds were In the packing pack-ing business there, you know. Michael Iihs gone Into business with pa here In Chieugo and I suppose you have heard of pa's success. Just all of a sudden he began to make a great tfeal of money after he left the butcher business busi-ness and went Into the yards the stock yards, you know. Poor mamma was so happy these last few years, and bad everything that was beautiful. I have two children Eugene and Pauline. "I am getting to be quite society person. You would laugh to see me. I am on the ladles' entertainment committee com-mittee of the World's fair. We are age. And wait a minute humus. I know what humus Is. It's decayed vegetables. There's always a pile by the side of the barn; and you've be? using It on the quick land. All the west sixteen Isn't clay. Part of It's muckland. All It needs Is draining and manure. With potash, too, and phosphoric add." I'ervus laughed s preat hearty laugh that Sellna found surprisingly Infuriating. Infuriat-ing. "Well, well, well 1 School teacher is a farmer now, huh? I bet even Widow Paarlenherg don't know as much as my little farmer about" he exploded again "about this, now, potash pot-ash and what kind of acid? Tell me, little Llna, from where did you learn all this about truck farming?" "Out of a book," Sellna said, almost snappishly. "I sent to Chicago for It" "A book I A book 1" He slapped his knee. "A vegetable farmer out of a book." "Why notl The man who wrote It knows more about vegetable farming than anybody In all High Prairie. He knows about new ways. You're running run-ning the farm just the way your father ran It." "What was good enough for my father fa-ther Is good enough for me." "It Isn't 1" cried Selina. "It Isn't 1 The book snys clay loam Is all right for cabbages, peas, and beans. It tells you how. It tells you howl" She was like a frantic little fly darting and pricking him on to accelerate the stolid sluggishness of his slow plodding gait. I'ervus stared straight ahead down the road between his horse's ears much as Klaus Pool had done so maddeningly on Sellna's first ride on the Halsted road. "Fine talk. Fine talk." "It Isn't talk. It's plans. You've got to plan." ready for Pervus and Jan when they came In from the barn. The house to clean, the chickens to tend, sewing, washing, Ironing, cooking. She contrived con-trived ways of minimizing her steps, of lightening her labor. And she saw clearly bow the little furm was mismanaged mis-managed through lack of foresight. Imagination, and she faced It squarely square-ly through stupidity. She was Jfond of this great, kindly, blundering, stubborn stub-born boy who was her husband. . But she saw him with nmuzlng clearness through the mists of her love. There was something prophetic about the way she began to absorb knowledge of the farm work, of vegetable culture, of marketing. Listening, seeing, she leurned about soli, planting, weather, selling. The dally talk of the house and fields was of nothing else. About this little twenty-five-acre garden patch there was nothing of the majesty majes-ty of the Iowa, Illinois and Kansas grain farms, with their endless billows of wheat and corn, rye, alfalfa and barley rolling away to the horizon. Everything was do.e In diminutive here. Sellna sensel that every Inch of soil should have been made to yield to the utmost. Yet there lay the west sixteen, useless during most of the year; reliable never. And there was no money to drain It or enrich It ; no ready cash for the purchase of profitable profit-able neighboring acreage. She did not know the term Intensive farming, but this was what she meant. During that winter she was often hideously lonely. She never got over her hunger for companionship. Here she was, a gregarious and fun-loving creature, buried In a snow-bound Illinois Illi-nois prairie farmhouse with a husband who looked upon conversation as a convenience, not a pastime. She WORK, W0RK1 6TNOPS13. Introduces "So Bis" (Dirk DeJong-) In bis Infancy. In-fancy. And hla mother, Sellna LieJonf, daughter of Simeon Peake, Rambler and tentleman of fortune. Her life, to jrounit womanhood in Chicago In 1881, bee been unconventional, come-what come-what seamy, but generally enjoy- able. At school her chum ia Julie Hempel, daughter of August Uempel. butcher. Simeon la killed In a quarrel that la not hla own, and Sellna, nineteen yeara old and practically destitute, secure a position aa teacher at the High Prairie school, In the outskirts of Chicago, living at the home of a truck farmer, Klaas Pool. In Roelf, twelve yeara old, son j "of Klaas, Sellna percelvea a kin-, kin-, dred apirlt, a lover of beauty, ; like herself. Sellna beara roaelp ; concerning the affection of the "Widow Paarlenberg," rich and good-looking, for Pervus DeJong, .. poor truck farmer, who Is Insen sible to the widow' attraction. For a community Moclable-' 8e-llna 8e-llna prepare a lunch box, dainty, ' but not of ample proportion, r which I to be "auctioned." ac cording to custom. The imallnes (! of the box excite derision and Sellna la heartbroken. But the bidding become spirited, DeJong -. finally aecurlng It for 10, a ! rldlculoualy high price. Over their lunch basket, which Sellna ; and DeJong share together, the ': aohool-teacher arrange to In struct the farmer, who educa-i educa-i i tlon ha been neglected. Propln- : ; qulty leads to mutual affection. ? Ptllna become Mrs. DeJong, a . "farmer' wife," with all the " hardship unavoidable at that : time. Dirk la born. ; CHAPTER VI Continued Pervus drove Into the Chicago mar- ket every other day. During July and .: ' ' August he sometimes did not have his clothes oft for a week. Together he - and Jan Steen would load the wagon with the day's garnering. At four he would start on the tedious trip into ' town. The historic old Haymarket on w West Bundolph street had become the i stand for market gardeners for miles ' ' . around Chicago. Here they stationed . - , their wagons In preparation for the ) next day's selling. The early comer got the advantageous stand. There " ' was no regular allotment of space. i Pervus tried to reach the Haymarket , by nine at night. Often bod roads f made a detour necessary and he was I late. That usually meant bad business 1 next duy. The men, for the most f part, slept on their wagons, curled up ton the wagon seat or stretched out on the sacks. Their horses were stabled and fed In near-by sheds, with more supposed to entertain all the visiting big bugs that Is the lady bugs. There I How Is that for a Joke? "I suppose you know about the Infanta In-fanta Eulalle. Of Spain, you know. And what she did about the Potter Palmer ball. . . ." Sellna, the letter In her work-stained work-stained hand, looked up and across the fields and away to where the prairie met the sky and closed in on her; her world. The Infunla Eulalle of Spain. . . . She went back to the letter "Well, she came to Chicago for the fair and Mrs. Potter Palmer was to give a huge reception and ball for her. Mrs. P. is head of the whole committee, commit-tee, you know, and I must say she looks queenly with her white balr so beautifully dressed and ber diamond dog-collar and her black velvet and all. Well, at the very last minute the Infanta In-fanta refused to attend the ball because be-cause she had Just heard that Mrs. P. was an Innkeeper's wife. Imagine I The Palmer house, of course." Selina, holding the letter In ber hand, Imagined. It was in the third year of Sellna's marriage that she first went Into the fields to work. Pervus had protested miserably, though the vegetables were spoiling In the ground. Selina had regained health and vigor after two years of wretchedness. She felt steel-strong and even hopeful again, sure sign of physical well-being. Long before now she had realized that this time must inevitably come. So she answered briskly, "Nonsense, Pervus. Per-vus. Working in the field's no harder than washing or ironing or scrubbing or standing over a hot stove In August Women's work I Housework's " the hardest work In the world. That's why men won't do It." She would often take the boy Dirk with her Into the fields, placing hlra on a heap of empty sacks In the shade. He Invariably crawled off this lowly throne to dig and burrow In the warm, black dirt. He even made as though, to help his mother, pulling at the rooted root-ed things with futile fingers, and sitting sit-ting back with a bump when a shallow root did unexpectedly yield to his tugging. tug-ging. "Look I He's a farmer already." Pervus Per-vus would say. So two years went three years four. In the fourth year of Sellna's marriage she suffered the loss of her one woman friend In High Prairie. Muurtje Pool died in childbirth, as was so often the case in this region where a Gampish midwife acted as obstretrl-clan. obstretrl-clan. The child, too, had not lived. Death had not been kind to Maartje Pool. It had brought neither peace nor youth to her face, as it often does. Selina, looking down at the strangely still figure that had been so active, so bustling, realized that for the first time in the years she had known her she was seeing Maartje Pool at rest. It seemed Incredible that she could lie there, the Infant In her arms, while the house was filled with people and there were chairs to be haqded, space to be cleared, food to be cooked and served. Sitting there with the other High Prairie women Sellna had a hideous feeling that Maartje would suddenly rise up and take things In charge; rub and scratch with capable fingers the spatters of dried mud on Klnas Pool's black trousers (he had been In the yard to see to the horses) ; quiet the loud walling of Geertje and Jnzlna ; pass her gnarled hand over Roelfs wide-staring eyes, wipe the film of dust from the parlor table that had never known a speck during her regime. Will Selina's energy and Ideas transform the farm? Or will he succumb to environment? (TO BB CONTINUED.,' "Fine talk. Fine talk." "Ob I" Sellna beat ber knee with an Impotent fist. It was the nearest they had ever come to quarreling. It would seem that Pervus bad the best of the argument, argu-ment, for when two years bad passed the west sixteen was still a boggy clay mass, and unprollflc; and the old house stared out shabby and paint I ess, at the dense willows by the roadside. They slept that night In one of the twenty-five-cent rooming houses. Rather, Rath-er, Pervus slept The woman lay awake, wept a little, perhaps. But In the morning Pervus might have noted (If he bad been a man given to noting) that the fine jaw-line was set as determinedly de-terminedly as ever with an angle that spelled Inevitably paint, drainage, humus, hu-mus, potash, phosphoric acid, and a .horse team. She rose before four with Pervus, glud to be out of the stuffy little room with Its spotted and scaly green wall paper, Its rickety bed and choir. They had a cup of coffee and a slice of bread In the eating bouse on the first floor. Sellnu waited while he tended the horse. It wus scarcely dawn when the trading began. Selina, watching It from the wagon seat, thought that this was a ridiculously haphazard and perilous peril-ous method of distributing the food for whose fruition Pervus had tolled with aching back and tired arms. But she suld nothing. She kept, perforce, to the house that first year, and the second. Pervus declared de-clared that his woman should never work In the fields as did many of the High Prairie wives and duughters. Sellna learned much that first year, and the second, but she snld little. She kept the house In order rough work, and endless and she managed, miraculously, mirac-ulously, to keep herself looking fresh and nent. She understood now Maartje Pool's drab garments, harassed face, heavily swift feet, never at rest. The Idea of (lowers In bowls was abandoned aban-doned by July. Had It not been for Roelfs faithful tending, the flower beds themselves, planted with such hopes, would have perished for lack of care. Roelf came often to the house, ne found there a tranquillity and peace never known in the Tool place, with Its hubbub and clatter. In order to make her house attractive Sellna had actually rifled her precious little bank hoard the four hundred and ninety-seven ninety-seven dollars left her by her father. She still had one of the clear white diamonds. She kept It sewed In the hem of an old flannel petticoat. The can of white paint and the brush actually did materialize. For weeks It was dangerous to sit. lean, or tread upon any paintable thing lu the DeJong farmhouse without eliciting a cry of warning from Sellna. She would actually have tried her hand at the outside of the house with a quart can and a three-Inch brush If Pervus hadn't Intervened. She hemmed dimity curtains, made slip-covers for the hideous hid-eous parlor sofa and the ugliest of the chairs. Subscribed for a magazine called House and Garden. Together she and Roelf used to pore over this fascinating periodical. If High Prairie had ever overheard one of these conversations con-versations between the farm woman who would always be a girl and the farm boy who had never been quite a child. It would have raised palms high In an "Og heden!" of horror. But High Prairie never heard, and wouldn't have understood If It had. Sellna was up dally at four. Dressing Dress-ing was s swift and mechanical covering cover-ing of the body. Breakfast must be - 't actual comfort than the men them-selves. them-selves. One could get a room for 1 tweuty-flve cents in one of the ramshackle ram-shackle rooming houses that fuced the street. But tbe rooms were small, stuffy, none too clean; the beds little more comfortable than the wagons. Be-: Be-: sides, twenty-five cents! You got twen- ty-flve cents for half a barrel of tonia- jf tues. You got twenty-five cents for a . suck of potatoes. Onions brought . I seventy-five cents a sack. Cabbages " 4 went a hundred heads for two dollars, Sand they were five-pound heads. If you (trove home with ten dollars In your i ket it represented a profit of ex-; ex-; j iicily zero. The sum must go above I l;uir. No; one did not pay out twenty-... twenty-... 4 lUe cents for the mere privilege of " I t ecping In a bed. it One June day, a month or more after I tueir marriage, Selina drove Into Chi-,? Chi-,? cago with Pervus. an Incongruous little I tlKUre in her bride's finery perched on . j the seat of the vegetuble wagon piled high with early garden stuff. It was, In a way, their wedding trip, for Sellna had not been away from the farm since her marriage. As they Jogged along now she revealed re-vealed magnificent plans that had been forming In her Imagination during the i past four weeks. It had not taken her ' four weeks or days to discover that I this great broad-shoaldered man she bad married was a kindly creature, ' $ lender and good, but lacking any I vestige of Initiative, of spirit. She ' marveled, soinetii.ies, at the memory ijot his boldness In bidding for her lunch box that evening of the raffle. It seemed Incredible now, though he frequently fre-quently referred to It, wagging his head dogglshly and grinning the broadly broad-ly complacent grin of the conquering male. But he was, after all, a dull fellow, and there was 'n Sellna a dash I of fire, of wholesome wickedness, of adventure, that he never quite under-V', under-V', stood. Ihor her flashes of flame he . I had a mingled feeling of uneasiness j snd pride. I In the manner of all young brides, I Selina- started bravely out to make her busbnnd over. He was handsome, i ' strong, gentle; slow, conservative, morose. mo-rose. She would make him keen, daring, dar-ing, successful, buoyant. Now, bumping bump-ing down the Halsted road, she sketched some of ber plans In large ! dashing strokes. "I'ervus, e must paint the house In October ft -ere the frost sets in. and after tile summer work Is over. Then f thai west sixteen. We'll drain It." I "Teh. drain." Pervus muttered. "It's elay land. Drain and you have got yet I elay Hard ciay soil." Sellna had the answer to that. "I know it too s got to use tile drain- She Would Take Dirk With Her Into the Fields, Placing Him on a Heap of Empty Sacks In the Shade. learned much that winter about the utter sordidness of farm life. She rarely saw the Pools; she rarely saw any one outside her own little household. house-hold. The fremt room the parlor-was parlor-was usually bilterly cold, but sometimes some-times she used to slip In there, a sliaul over her shoulders, and sit at the frosty window to watch for a wagon to go by, or a chance pedestrian up the road. She did not pity herself, nor regret her step. She felt, physically, pretty well for a child-bearing woman ; and Pervus was tender, kindly, sympathetic, sym-pathetic, If not always understanding. She struggled pillantly to keep up the small decencies of existence. She loved the glow of Pervus' eyes when she appeared with a bright ribbon, a fresh collar, thoLfh he said nothing and perhaps she ou'y fancied that he noticed. Once or twice she hud walked the mile and a half of slippery road to the Pools', ai.i had sat In Maartje's warm bright bustling kitchen for comfort. Where was adventure ad-venture now? And where was life? And where the love of chance bred In her by her father? The two years following Dirk's birth were always somewhat vague In Sellna's Se-llna's mind, like a dream In which horror hor-ror and happiness are Inextricably blended. The boy was a plump, hardy Infant. He had his lather's blond exterior, ex-terior, his mother's brunette vivacity. At two be was a child of average Intelligence, Intel-ligence, sturdy physique and marked good humor. He almost never cried. He was Just twelve months old when Selina's second child a girl-was girl-was born dead. Twice during those two years Pervus fell victim to his so-called so-called rheumatic attacks following the early spring planting when he was often forced to stand In water up to his ankles. He suffered intensely and during bis illness was as tractable as a goaded bulL. Sellna understood why half of High Prairie was bent and twisted with rheumatism why the little Dutch Reformed church on Sunday Sun-day mornings resembled a shrine to which sick and crippled pilgrims creep. Sellna bad oeen married almost |
