Giants in the Earth

When the quarrel had finally worn itself out they had found themselves at opposite ends of the earth, though lying side by side in the same bed.

Many and incredible are the tales the grandfathers tell from those days when the wilderness was yet untamed, and when they, unwittingly, founded the Kingdom.

A feeling of unfathomable loneliness settled upon her.

Here was the endless prairie, so rich in its blessings of fertility, but also full of great loneliness--a form of freedom which curiously affected the minds of strangers, especially those to whom the Lord had given a sad heart.

But more to be dreaded than this tribulation was the strange spell of sadness which the unbroken solitude cast upon the minds of stone.

People had never dwelt here, people would never come; never could they find home in this vast, wind-swept void.

The explanation was plain; this desolation out here called forth all that was evil in human nature.

The caravan headed for the sky; it steered straight onward. Now, at last, Per Hansa had time to look about him and rejoice in what he saw... All he saw was beautiful

Tish-ah!" said the grass. "Tish-ah, tish-ah!" Never had it said anything else--never would it say anything else. It bent resiliently under the trampling feet; it did not break, but it complained aloud every time--for nothing like this had ever happened to it before.

An endless plain. From Kansas--Illinois, it stretched, far into the Canadian North, God alone knows how far; from the Mississippi River to the wester Rockies, miles without number... Endless...beginningless.

Everything he had planted that spring was blooming like a garden. Why, he could just hear the potatoes grow!

But it had been as if a resistless flood had torn them loose from their foundations and was carrying them helplessly along on it's current---flinging them here and there, hurling them madly onward, with no known destination ahead.

It seemed plain to her now that human life could not endure in this country.