On the farms and in the houses in the towns the men
and women worked together toward the same ends in life. They lived in small
frame houses set on the plains like boxes, but very substantially built.
The carpenter who built a farmer's house differentiated it from the barn by
putting what he called scroll work up under the eaves and by building at
the front a porch with carved posts. After one of the poor little houses
had been lived in for a long time, after children had been born and men had
died, after men and women had suffered and had moments of joy together in
the tiny rooms under the low roofs, a subtle change took place. The houses
became almost beautiful in their old humanness. Each of the houses began
vaguely to shadow forth the personality of the people who lived within its
walls.
In the farmhouses and in the houses on the side streets in the villages,
life awoke at dawn. Back of each of the houses there was a barn for the
horses and cows, and sheds for pigs and chickens. At daylight a chorus of
neighs, squeals, and cries broke the silence. Boys and men came out of
the houses. They stood in the open spaces before the barns and stretched
their bodies like sleepy animals. The arms extended upward seemed to be
supplicating the gods for fair days, and the fair days came. The men and
boys went to a pump beside the house and washed their faces and hands
in the cold water.
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