In the kitchens there was the smell and sound of the
cooking of food. The women also were astir. The men went into the barns to
feed the animals and then hurried to the houses to be themselves fed. A
continual grunting sound came from the sheds where pigs were eating corn,
and over the houses a contented silence brooded.
After the morning meal men and animals went together to the fields and to
the doing of their tasks, and in the houses the women mended clothes, put
fruit in cans against the coming of winter and talked of woman's affairs.
On the streets of the towns on fair days lawyers, doctors, the officials of
the county courts, and the merchants walked about in their shirt sleeves.
The house painter went along with his ladder on his shoulder. In the
stillness there could be heard the hammers of the carpenters building a
new house for the son of a merchant who had married the daughter of a
blacksmith. A sense of quiet growth awoke in sleeping minds. It was the
time for art and beauty to awake in the land.
Instead, the giant, Industry, awoke. Boys, who in the schools had read of
Lincoln, walking for miles through the forest to borrow his first book, and
of Garfield, the towpath lad who became president, began to read in the
newspapers and magazines of men who by developing their faculty for getting
and keeping money had become suddenly and overwhelmingly rich.
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