A Son of the Middle Border Quotes

“I confess that as I saw the tender plants and shining flowers bow before the remorseless beam, civilisation seemed a sad business, and yet there was something epic, something large-gestured and splendid in the "breaking" season. Smooth, glossy and unwrinkled the thick ribbon of jet-black sod rose upon the share and rolled away from the mold-board's glistening curve to tuck itself upside down into the furrow beneath the horse's heels, and the picture which my uncle made, gave me pleasure in spite of the sad changes he was making.”
― Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border

“Thus it happened that my first impressions of life were martial, and my training military, for my father brought back from his two years' campaigning under Sherman and Thomas the temper and habit of a soldier.”
― Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border

“There were moments of a morning or at sunset when the plain was splendid as a tranquil sea, and in such moments I bowed down to its mysterious beauty--but for the most part it seemed an empty, desolate, mocking world.”
― Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border

“Each of our lives was knit into these hedges and rooted in these fields and yet, notwithstanding all this, in response to some powerful yearning, my father was about to set out for the fifth time into the still more remote and untrodden west.”
― Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border