The wings and the golden weather and the tang of frost in the mornings made Laura want to go somewhere. She did not know where. She wanted only to go.
The road goes up hill and down, and it is rutted and dusty and stony but every turn of the wheels changes our view of the woods and the hills. The sky seems lower here, and it is the softest blue. The distances and the valleys are blue whenever you can see them. It is a drowsy country that makes you feel wide awake and alive but somehow contented.
Almanzo knew that in the whole world there was nothing so beautiful, so fascinating, as beautiful horses. When he thought that it would be years and years before he could have a little colt to teach and take care of, he could hardly bear it.
A good horseman always takes care of his horses before he eats or rests.
It was farmers that took all that land and made it America... It was farmers that went over the mountains, and cleared the land, and settled it, and farmed it, and hung onto their land.
Father always maintained that a man would do more work in twelve hours, if he had a rest and all the egg-nog he could drink, morning and afternoon.
The creek would go down. It would be a gentle, pleasant place to play in again. But nobody could make it do that. Nobody could make it do anything. Laura knew now that there were things stronger than anybody. But the creek had not got her. It had not made her scream and it could not make her cry.
Mary was too scared to move. Laura was too scared to stand still.
Oh, Charles!” Ma said. “What will we do?” Pa slumped down on a bench and said, “I don’t know.
They heard the voices howling and shrieking in the wind, and the house creaking, and the snow swishing. “This will never do!” said Ma. “Let’s play bean-porridge hot! Mary, you and Laura play it together, and, Carrie, you hold up your hands. We’ll do it faster than Mary and Laura can!” So they all played bean-porridge hot, faster and faster until they could not say the rhymes, for laughing.
Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasn’t Susan’s fault that she was only a corncob. Sometimes Mary let Laura hold Nettie, but she did it only when Susan couldn’t see.
But why couldn’t the little cat –.
He was blowing up the bladder.
Ma wrote them down with her little red pen that had a mother-of-pearl handle shaped like a feather. When her neat, clear writing filled the paper she turned it and filled it again crosswise. On the other side of the paper she did the same thing so that every inch of paper held all the words that it possibly could.
You don’t want to hear about the time I was a naughty little boy.
For dinner they ate the stewed pumpkin with their bread. They made it into pretty shapes on their plates. It was a beautiful color, and smoothed and molded so prettily with their knives. Ma never allowed them to play with their food at table; they must always eat nicely everything that was set before them, leaving nothing on their plates. But she did let them make the rich, brown, stewed pumpkin into pretty shapes before they ate it.
They didn’t say anything. Perhaps Mary felt sweet and good inside, but Laura didn’t. When she looked at Mary she wanted to slap her. So she dared not look at Mary again.
In the bitter cold weather Pa could not be sure of finding any wild game to shoot for meat. The.
The barrels of salted fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked on the pantry shelves. Then.
There was only the enormous, empty prairie, with grasses blowing in waves of light and shadow across it, and the great blue sky above it, and birds flying up from it and singing with joy because the sun was rising. And on the whole enormous prairie there was no sign that any other human being had ever been there.