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And given an outlet in the Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationalist Party). Under the leadership of dedicated. A political scientist who studies nationalism. Hans Kohn, a professor of history whose specialty is nationalism. *Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (new York: The Macmillan. Co -, l96l) Pe. Gareth Thomas. Dear Internet Archive Supporter. I ask only once a year: please help the Internet Archive today. We're an independent, non-profit website that the entire world depends on. Most can't afford to donate, but we hope you can. The average donation is about $41. If everyone chips in $5, we can keep this going for free.

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If everyone chips in $5, we can keep this going for free. For a fraction of the cost of a book, we can share that book online forever. When I started this, people called me crazy.

Collect web pages? For 21 years, we’ve backed up the Web, so if government data or entire newspapers disappear, we can say: We Got This. We’re dedicated to reader privacy. We never accept ads. But we still need to pay for servers and staff.

If you find our site useful, please chip in. —Brewster Kahle, Founder, Internet Archive. $3,713,660 $6M Dear Internet Archive Supporter, I ask only once a year: please help the Internet Archive today. We’re an independent, non-profit website that the entire world depends on. Most can’t afford to donate, but we hope you can. The average donation is about $41.

If everyone chips in $5, we can keep this going for free. For a fraction of the cost of a book, we can share that book online forever. When I started this, people called me crazy.

Collect web pages? For 21 years, we’ve backed up the Web, so if government data or entire newspapers disappear, we can say: We Got This. We’re dedicated to reader privacy. We never accept ads.

But we still need to pay for servers and staff. If you find our site useful, please chip in. —Brewster Kahle, Founder, Internet Archive.

Dear Internet Archive Supporter, I ask only once a year: please help the Internet Archive today. We’re an independent, non-profit website that the entire world depends on. If everyone chips in $5, we can keep this going for free. For a fraction of the cost of a book, we can share that book online forever. When I started this, people called me crazy. Collect web pages? For 21 years, we’ve backed up the Web, so if government data or entire newspapers disappear, we can say: We Got This.

We never accept ads, but we still need to pay for servers and staff. If you find our site useful, please chip in.

—Brewster Kahle, Founder, Internet Archive.

Four Quarters: May 1963 Vol. 4 Editor 0 Business Manager 0 BROTHER EDWARD PATRICK 0 F.S.C. Associate Editor 0 ROBERT F. SMITH Managing E 0 CHARLES V. KELLY Cir 0 tion Manager 0 RICHARD P. BOUDREAU E 0 itori 0 l Asso 0 s Chairman 0 ROBERT M 0 0 Thi s Complete Issue is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at La Salle University Digital Commons.

It has been accepted for inclusion in Four Quarters by an authorized editor of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact Follow this and additional works at: Recommended Citation - Article 1 four too 95 >»» ess CD cu>La Salle College Faculty Number Quarters The House across the Street An Article by F. Lewis Donaghy, F.S.C. Winter Fever A Short Story by Richard FitzGerald Light in August: Religion and the Agape of Nature An Article by Thomas F.

Loughrey Pas de Deux A Poem by Charles Edward Eaton The Children's Game A Poem by Brother Fidelian, F.S.C. The Summer House A Fictional Narrative by Claude F.

Koch Centennial Year La Salle College Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation The House Across the Street • F. Lewis Donaghy, F.S.C. In leaving the Twentieth Street side of the main campus of La Salle College, one notices an attractive gray and white colonial house set in almost rural surroundings behind a large, high wall. Even for historic Germantown, there is a special bearing about the house, the wooded fields around it, its fenced truck and formal gardens that suggest the past. And indeed the house, together with its surrounding land, which at one time extended over 2000 acres, does have an interesting history, a history which La Salle College has now come to share.

Today the College occupies several tracts of this land, acquired through the years since 1926 and originally all a part of an estate called Belfield, the center of which was the gambrel-roofed house across the street. Actually, negotiations for the purchase of the land which makes up the present campus of the College were first begun in 1925. College administrators under the leadership of Brother Dorotheus Lewis, F.S.C.

Were interested in a ten-acre plot fronting on Olney Avenue and extending southward to EUicot Road. James Starr, one of the heirs of the Belfield estate, owned ninetenths of an acre where the elbow of College Hall stands today. When first approached about the sale of his land, he was reluctant to sell. The remaining ten acres desired by the College belonged to five heirs of the Fox estate, also part of original Belfield, who also seemed unwilling to sell because of the large income tax which would be incurred. In view of these difficulties, the College was fortunate in having the legal services of J.

Burrwood Daly. An astute negotiator, Burrwood Daly, by April 20, 1926, had secured a tentative agreement of sale with negligible restrictions. It was agreed that the property would be used only to carry on the operations of the College, and that any necessary 'garage, boilerhouse, powerhouse and kitchen' would be located at least one hundred feet from all boundary lines. Three days after the tentative agreement was secured, the Board of Managers of La Salle College voted to purchase ten acres of the Fox estate for $200,000 and the remaining fraction from James Starr for $27,500. After further legal clarifications and understandings, title to ten and a fraction acres of Belfield was transferred to the College. On this historic land the present campus Avas initiated.

In earliest colonial times, the land in question was part of a grant made by William Penn to one Samuel Richardson. This grant is not to be confused with that made to Daniel Pastorius and his followers, which eventually became Germantown. Richardson's grant was within the territorial limits of Bristol Township, County of Philadelphia. Some years later, in 1696.

Richardson gave 500 acres to his son Joseph, and it is believed that the original mansion on the Belfield property was built at that time. However, the house was much smaller than it is today.

The estate remained in the Richardson family through 1726. Between that year and 1810, the land was possessed by the Keysers. Funks, Neaves, Ecksteins, Correys, Smiths, and McShanes, names traditional to the environs of Germantown. Finally, in 1810, Belfield reverted to Charles Willson Peale, famous American artist.

No, George Washington did not sleep here. Although Charles Willson Peale was commissioned by the Supreme Executive Council in 1779 to paint a portrait of Washington, it is obvious that Peale had not yet moved to Belfield, although he knew of the place from his visits to Washington's headquarters during the Battle of Germantown. No doubt the Washington portrait was painted in Peale's city residence. (The original portrait, incidentally, was destroyed by the British. Fortunately, Peale had made a mezzotint of the portrait and managed to preserve it for posterity.) Actually, poor health and perhaps old age forced Peale to look for a country home. When he took over Belfield, it consisted of about 100 acres.

He described it in a letter to his son Rembrandt as follows... The situation is exactly equal between the Old York Turnpike & Germantown Turnpike,% mile distant each. Two streams run through it... These streams at present make a fine meadow.

The mansion is old fashioned, with 10 or 12 rooms, a stone barn with stable room for 5 horses, and a wagon house, chaise house, smoke house, hen house, springhouse with a fine stream, 2 stories high, the upper to making cheese, a tolerable good house for the tenant, and sundry conveniences in the house way, with an excellent garden with respect to situation, good paling, and some good fruit.^ He had paid $9,500 for this prize. Peale pursued the task of putting the property in good order with great energy.

Repairing and enlarging the mansion took most of his time in 1810. This man of many talents, who had made a set of false teeth for George Washington and was America's first taxidermist, proved quite capable as carpenter, glazier, housepainter, and, in general, master-builder. With the mansion in satisfactory condition, Peale concentrated on beautifying his grounds and tilling the soil. For three years his son Rubens helped lay out a beautiful and intricate garden planted with a variety of exotic shrubs, trees, and plants. Peale's garden became one of the beauty spots of nineteenth-century Philadelphia, and it attracted hundreds of people when it was opened for inspection.

Although the formal gardens took much of Peale's time, he did not neglect the farm. He corresponded frequently with Thomas Jefferson seeking advice on his agricultural pursuits. It was Jefferson who taught Peale the secret of contour plowing, which was a boon to tilling the undulating hills of Belfield. Despite many arduous hours of planning and work, Peale's farm was not a financial success. Robert Morris, a neighboring farmer, came to his aid.

Planting currants for wine making, Morris felt, would end Peale's financial difficulties. At first, Peale hesitated because of his personal antipathy to the habit of drinking. But he overcame his doubts through some friendly persuasion and eventually realized a profit on the wine making. As one chronicler remarked, 'The heady sweet wine of Belfield hecame, as years passed, famous among the connoisseurs of Philadelphia.' Considering the difficulties involved in making the farm pay, Peale probably felt that the name he gave his estate upon his arrival was fitting: Farm Persevere. However, his many friends thought the name was too forbidding, and they prevailed upon him to change it.

In the summer of 1812 he agreed, and the present name, Belfield, was chosen. He named it for Bellefield, the home of John Hesselius on the Severn River in Maryland, where Peale had received his first lessons in painting. Despite the work required at Belfield, Peale never gave up his painting. During his short stay there, he is believed to have produced over one hundred pieces.

A few times the garden at Belfield became the scene of public exhibitions of his works. Such events were received with much enthusiasm among the high society of Philadelphia and Germantown. In 1817, after a storm damaged part of the mansion, a new extension was built, with a special 'painting' room over the kitchen. Peale had been planning just such a room for a long time. Unfortunately, the room would be used only a few years.

Both Peale and his wife shortly thereafter were struck with serious illness, to which his wife finally succumbed in 1820. A few months later, Peale moved back to the city and occupied himself with his first love, The Museum. Belfield was offered in exchange for a 'suitable museum site' in the city, but there were no takers.

In 1823, Belfield was put up for rent at a price that hardly paid the taxes. The following year the property was mortgaged. In the meantime, Linnaeus Peale moved to Belfield, but he did not have his father's energy, and the place 'ran wild.' Finally, in January 1826, Belfield was sold to William Logan Fisher, whose Wakefield property adjoined Belfield. That same year, Fisher made a gift of it to his daughter Sarah upon her marriage to William Wister. William Wister was a descendant of John Wister, a Philadelphia wine merchant, whose famous summer house, Grumblethorpe, still stands on Germantown Avenue.

John Wister's older brother, Caspar Wistar, father of the noted botanist Dr. Caspar Wistar, dealt in glass and buttons. (The difference in spelling of surnames is attributed to the mistake of a naturalization clerk.

Genealogically, the Wistars and the Wisters are the same.) Belfield under the Wisters continued to be a place of beauty and interest. William Wister, sometimes called 'the father of American cricket,' spent many hours at Belfield teaching the sport to his Germantown neighbors. In 1854, Belfield was used for the first home of the American Cricket Club, later called the Germantown Cricket Club. Waxing eloquent in 1910, George M.

Newhall expressed the following sentiments about Belfield: The memories of those days are precious, and it would seem that Providence had preserved this lovely spot intact for the sentimental old cricketers, as the Magna Charta and the Liberty Bell are preserved for the Anglo-Saxon race. All cricketers and lovers of good sport should prize this scene, where American cricket had its birth and spent its childhood.However, these glories had in reality faded before the end of the century.

West of Germantown, became the home of the Germantown Cricket Club in 1889. It was composed of the merged members of the club founded at Belfield and the Young America Cricket Club founded in 1855. Part of the Belfield Country Club, which was located on the north side of Olney Avenue, remained in operation until 1920. Another organization established at Belfield was The Civic Club of Philadelphia, founded on January 6, 1894 by Mrs.

Cornelia Frothingham and Miss Mary Channing Wister. It became the parent organization of similar groups throughout the country.

With the passage of time, many new members of the Wister family came to share in the estate. Moreover, before his death in 1862, William Logan Fisher had sold several portions of Belfield. The remainder was willed to his daughters Sarah Logan Wister and Mary Rodman Fox. Fisher stipulated that the portion of Belfield containing the mansion should go to Sarah L. Wister, since she had spent considerable money in repairing and rebuilding the house. Upon her death in 1891, Sarah L. Wister willed her portion of Belfield to her four sons, William Rotch, John, Jones, and Rodman Wister.

It was from these heirs and their descendants and those of Mary Rodman Fox that La Salle College purchased the original plot of its present main campus. A little more than a decade after the first purchase at Belfield, Brother Edwin Anselm, F.S.C., then president of the College, saw that future needs of the institution would require additional land. A ten-acre tract on the eastern boundary of the campus was sought, the area where Leonard Hall, Benilde Hall, the Science Building, the baseball field, and parts of the Library and College Union are now located. But the land was already under option to the Philadelphia Board of Education. However, Add Anderson, Business Manager for the Philadelphia Board of Education, came forward with a solution which served the best interests of the College.

He noted that it was the policy of the Board of Education never to stand in the way of progress of any educational institution, and Avherever it could, the Board would advance the cause of education in Philadelphia on any level. Accordingly, arrangements were made to cede the right of option through Anderson's office, clearing the way for the purchase of the additional ten acres by the College. Negotiations were completed in 1937, and another segment of Belfield joined the La Salle College campus. One small triangular plot, approximately where the east wing of the Library now stands, was not part of Belfield. It had belonged to one John Armstrong, but was later acquired by the Wisters. La Salle, after World War II, was overwhelmed by the host of young men returning from the armed forces, eager for a college training.

At that time, the College was under the presidential direction of Brother Gregorian Paul, F.S.C., who saw the implications from the influx of students. In addition to undertaking immediate expansion of the physical facilities, he looked beyond the postwar boom to a future America demanding more and more highly trained men. To meet the needs of further expansion, two tracts of land were acquired in 1950 and shortly thereafter utilized for residence halls and needed parking facilities.

Seven years later, three property purchases were made, one from the Einstein Medical Center. In 1961, the final addition to the main campus was made under the guidance of Brother Daniel Bernian, F.S.C., present president of the ColJege. The last four plots acquired now accommodate additional student housing and student and faculty parking. All additions to the campus made since 1937 were at one time part of Belfield property.

Today, the 'Mansion,' as it is known on campus, one of the senior residence halls, is leased from the present owner of Belfield, Mrs. Sarah Logan Starr Blain, great-great-granddaughter of William Wister, who first occupied Belfield in 1826. At the present time, one hundred and thirty-seven years after the marriage of Sarah Fisher to William Wister, the Wister family still occupies the well-kept Belfield mansion.

If Charles Willson Peale, William Logan Fisher, or William Wister were to see Belfield today, they would be startled by many changes. Spacious, modern buildings, wide avenues, and thousands of young people going about the business of education would meet their unbelieving eyes. Gone are many of the outbuildings of Belfield; Peale Road, which would have cut a swath through Central High School, adjoining La Salle, and McCarthy Stadium, no longer exists; the Belfield Country Club has disappeared; and the original cricket field would be difficult to conjure up even for this imaginary visit. Yet, the true center of Belfield, the family mansion, that dignified, eloquent sentinel of the past, still stands as a monument to those who spent such rich and full lives within its shadows. It would be incorrect to conclude that Belfield now rests in a shadow of the College.

Actually, the two institutions complement each other. Belfield of yesterday established rich and fine traditions; La Salle today continues many of those traditions. Just as Peale exhibited his works of art, many fine collections are made available to both students and the public today. The constant stream of well-known actors, playwrights, novelists, and musicians to La Salle recalls the visits of such persons as actress Fanny Kemble, a neighbor of the Wisters, to Belfield; or the long stays of Owen Wister, grandson of Fanny Kemble and author of The Virginian. No doubt the cricketers of 1854 would be pleased to know that the tradition of sport at Belfield is continued through a variety of sports in the College program of 1963. Finally, efforts are made today to maintain an attractive campus, surroundings proper and conducive to the pursuit of knowledge.

Although the College does not have the services of such an artist as Rubens Pealein an advisory capacity, it does have a Ruben Clark, whose horticultural activities help keep the beauty and charm of 'old' Belfield. It seems fitting that a college such as La Salle have the location it enjoys in a culturally historical place like Belfield. As time passes, Belfield adds to its long history, interpreted and extended through the day-to-day activities of the academic life. Truly, these acres comprise the La Salle CoUeo-e-Belfield Campus.

• Richard FitzGerald sunk into the earth, and the sky was beginning to darken from white and bright yellow to a kind of early evening orange. Junior's head was fixed in an awkward attitude, and he wasn't at all interested in the sinking sun, but in the cool condensing refreshment tin, sitting half full and waiting, on Moss's leg. 'Hurry up, willya, huh! Someone else's thirsty too, ya know.' Moss turned around, looked at Junior, dropped his eyes to the tin, then pulled his heavy, piggish head back up, flaming red in the heat slowly cooling out of him. 'Can't a man take his time about drinkin' his Kool Aid?'

He screeched. 'Take your time, yeah, but someone else's waitin' too.' Moss slowly drained the cup, all but the end of the grape-colored juice, which he tossed out, raising a minute dustpuff, and handed the cup to Junior, who passed it to Ronald. Junior swung his head cockily, slightly toward the sun, and said to his brother, 'Fill it up, Ronald, huh? Sure hot today.' Ronald watched the immersed cup nearly fill, a darker color than the scraped blue back of Moss's new pickup, and half handed, half had the cup taken from his fingers by Junior, who drank it down, noisily, quickly, ungratefully. 'Darn good,' Junior breathed out.

Ronald took the cup back and poured himself another. He took his time about swallowing it. While he was refilling, Doug, thinking the men had drunk down their thirst, rushed up, his hands out, and received the renewed brimming tin.

Next it would be Junior. While the boys were drinking. Moss moved off to the south of the pyramid and glanced up its side and then out at the last glare of the sun, paling and disappearing so that a man could squint right into it. Moss sat down on an extra bale, pulJed the bowl of his pipe out of one chest pocket, the tobacco from the other, punched shreds into the bowl, lighted it, and, with his elbows resting on his knees, sat smoking, watching the clouds absorb some of the color the hidden sun was giving off.

He took a puff, then another, and, conscious of the swish of Kool Aid, the boys' rowdy voices, and the flutter of birds rippling across the sky, he tried to rest the pain in his shoulders, arms, and back by leaning against the unyielding wall of hay behind him. Sure is a pretty afternoon, he reflected, letting a miniature cloud of smoke out until it rose and disconnected itself just above his head. The sky was as pretty a sight as Moss'd seen, unless it was the water, sometimes, when the blue of the sky got in it just at the right angle. He was disturbed by the squabble starting between Ronald and Junior. 'You went and told him?' 'You kin bet I told him good!' At first his brows drew tight, as in pain.

He didn't like his rest spoiled by two grown boys. They were old enough to let a soul sit in peace, weren't they? Trouble with giving them more'n the others everywhere around have. And Junior having a new International coming next month.

Moss felt a transient pleasure of pride. His brow loosened when Ronald finally relinquished the tin to Junior and approached, accompanied by Doug at his knee. Moss saw Junior go at the canteen furiously, throwing the cup up emptying to his mouth twice, and then being frustrated the third time, like a young calf who's spent its cow. The canteen was empty.

His face looked different today than usual. It was a little cocky. Maybe he was still mad over the Kool Aid. Or maybe something worse. He noticed the two directions Junior's eyes took, though he had long grown used to them, and, looking at the ground, puffed on his pipe.

He began to speak but Junior interrupted. Moss raised his head quickly, more to hear than take offense. 'Brung my car today, so reckon I'll get started home.' Moss shook his head up and down twice seriously.

'Guess I'll mosey down th' back way 'n check th' farms, sure everythin's okay. Don't wait dinner for me. I'll be along. You kin put mine in th' icebox and I'll eat when I get there.'

Junior smiled broadly over nothing, and Moss took this for Junior's sudden ornery way. By now, lofty clouds glowed a bright orange, due west, and Moss concentrated on the light. Junior, seeing the old man's attention wander, climbed into his car quickly and slammed the door, started it, his chin tilted back and eyes lifted, and began to inch away. 'Oh, Junior,' Moss croaked, waving his thick, stubby hand back and forth over his head as though to gain time, 'Don't wait for me. I'll be along by 'n by.'

Junior nodded, then began to rush up the hill, tooting once and raising his hand up to his face level, without turning, as a sign of departure. The car rumbled and shook violently.

Once the motor seemed to Moss to quit; then there was the hold up when Junior reached the highway; then the splurge of gas, roar, and dying echo. Moss noticed his pipe had gone out. Zeek Afridi Bibi Shirini Pashto Song Mp3 Free Download.

He started to reach down for his tobacco, then thought better of it, and laid the pipe stem simply back between his teeth and stood up, feeling small against the backdrop of a thousand hundred-and-fifty-p o u n d hay bales. He looked all around the sky, hemispherically, and got an idea of the color and the size of his world.

Then he took his pipe out and held the bowl in his right hand, listened to the birds whistling, saw two, inseparable sweeping across the expanse. He thought of his six hundred acres with pervading good feeling. Six hundred acres in Iowa is a lot of acres, he thought, and watched the birds sail with no noise through his air, saw them switch at each other, cry, then spin up, one following the other, spreading wings, changing direction, winging, gliding, until they were vague dots and then nothing at all. A little breeze was stirring, and the sun had begun its inevitable draining of light off the earth.

The hay smelled good; the elevator was sound asleep, leaning all the way up the stone-like stack. The silence brought back the yells of the boys, younger, arguing every year they made hay together. Come September you'd hear 'em, spreadin' the tarpaulin to keep the rain and snow out, for the cattle that'd tear into the goods when the heavy snows would come. It was not hard for Moss to think of winter, even on these hottest days. When the afternoon seemed to collapse into the cooling nighttime. Moss placed his pipe into his shirt pocket, stem first, gave one more satisfying glance over everything, then walked to the truck. He was thankful they built them so high above the ground these days, for the spring and autumn mud sometimes nearly buries the tires.

The four-wheel drive was something to be thankful for too. He made the tailgate fast, after he set the thermos canteen in the front seat. Then he started the engine and began to make bumpy progress up to the gate, which he closed before running onto the highway. He remembered how Ronald had turned east to get home to Cassy and the kids, then Junior had turned east to go home and cook dinner, which he'd have to fix tonight, with Bertha prancing off to some social doin's. She always swore when she got moved out of the country that she'd never stop running and she hadn't, spending his profits on society and nonsense. Then Moss went west and started out of low gear into drive, making down the Highway W about three hundred rods to the dirt road leading him back deeper into the country.

It was longer to his and Bertha's house in the city this way, but he'd get a chance to check his two smaller farms (Ronald, of course, kept an eye on things at his place), and he could rest and look at the water and watch the ducks and geese in the pond if he got there before dark. Moss's truck was alone on Highway W, going west into the division of colors the old sunset was spraying into the cloud covering. Deep blue had given way to orange, yellow, green, vermilion and pink, and spots of light blue. Going twenty-five miles an hour to the top of the hill where he'd turn south. Moss felt how it'd be something to keep right on driving clear to the sky, clear up to the color and get lost in it, and never come back to doing chores — feeding cattle, nailing up barns, making hay.

Moss turned south, and as he did, pebbles were bouncing under his short, high, sharp, hard fenders, and he gave a thought to hoA - Junior had fought with Ronald over the canteen no different from how boss would get over a rotted-out orange peel. He was a changed hand, all right. Couldn't be flu; been too long for that.

Junior'd plain soured over something, like his allowance'd been cut or he'd bruised himself bad choring or—maybe what Ronald said. Moss rode, heavy at his stomach.

He could hear a pig screaming in the pen, sure she'd been nipped by another broodsow for nudging in to steal the garbage. His thought changed to Junior's serious, complaining face, pictured him doing what Ronald said, about him deliberately starving the cattle and hogs: feeding hogs a couple ears of corn 'stead of couple of bushels, then settin' along th' fence, spittin' and kickin' the hogs upside the jaws, laughin' at 'em tearin' each other up, fightin' and squealin' over the couple ears of corn. Pebbles still crunched up from the rubber tires to the heavy metal fenders, as he got ready to turn east. When the turn came, the pickup rode around it cleanly. Out before him lay the fields neighboring his own and the fences beyond which his land ran free. He thought, as his wheels jounced in and out of the holes in the broken hard-top road, how the face of the land hadn't much changed since he was a boy, three years hiking over it to that broken little Clayton county schoolhouse up on the rise back aways, so high up that all the winter gales would filter right on through its boards before continuing down across the fields, numbing the cattle. Three years had been enough.

His pop hadn't cared for education neither. It was work Moss'd craved, and work he got. To make something of himself. Hindi Serial Kesar Episode 1. At that time, his pop had run a fifty-acre plot, and Moss had done what he said, built it up more'n ten times the size. The blue Chevrolet pickup rose to the top of a hill and there pulled off onto the grass.

He pulled on the parking brake. There, lying out to his right and left of the road lay his land, Moss Hartman, farm Numbers One, Two, and Three, six hundred acres of hay, and oats, and corn; six hundred animals: bulls, steers, cows, sheep, hogs. The cornstalks had long burst the ground, and he could imagine what the rain and heat would do to it, give them another week or two. There stretched Moss Hartman's life, all he ever desired, all he'd worked for, and made. And it was his, for keeps. And bore his name. And kept him and his boys, despite Bertha, in plenty.

He'd had to work sixteen-hour days, winter and summer since he was fourteen, to create it. It wasn't easy, starting with fifty acres. It took time and work and no fooling. Seed for planting, to feed the stock; stock to market, to make the money, to buy more land. Good feeding, good breeding, and care, raising the stock to weigh in right, for the whole quarter the pound for hog's meat; steers the same. He'd planned it: more land, for more meat, meat for money, money for more land. The beautiful cycle'd made him a big man, something his father always dreamed of him being.

'A man's only's big as his plot,' his pop had told him many times. New land had come and eaten up the profits, but profits grew until the depression, when meat wasn't bringing enough to put feed back into the hogs' mouths. But he'd outlasted that; Bertha, obese, hair-knotted, always complaining about mother's pains, and tending the animals and keeping things sanitary, and never seeing her husband or nobody else. He stopped to think of Bertha in town, minding her manners with the fine ladies holding teacups and telling ladies-things in a whisper, saw Ronald — and proud of him — breeding another big family after him, wondered a sad minute about Junior, saw against time how all three of them, younger, had a bit in his big plan to spread, godamighty — to spread. Looking out through a dusty windshield, he watched the cattle graze, but their lack of ambition, following their noses and mouths only, haunted him, made him a little sick. God made the dumb animals, his pop'd said.

His eye scanned the corn shoots, the spinning windmill, the two boxish white farmhouses set sixty rods apart, the great white cross fences, sturdy and impressive like a great ancient wall, and he knew his plan had borne fruit. But he was not done yet. There was still a tail on the end of his plan that'd take a few years yet to finish. It wasn't for money. It was for pleasure, for beauty.

He relished in his mind a picture of the pond, down behind the cornfield, and started the motor without even looking into the rear-view mirror, and started out onto the broken hard-top road. Going fifteen miles an hour he made the next rise, a part of his land behind him now, and—ah! —ahead, set into a miniature valley in the cavity between two great green lawns of blue grass below his Farm Number Three lay, rippling pleasantly in the fast fading light, his masterpiece. A blue pool — in the midst of cornfields going a mile north, a mile south, and a hundred rods east and west — lay snugly bedded in unplowed dignity. He watched the geese and ducks with their iridescent green necks, and against his will, sickened at their aimless nowhere wandering, hunting food, or a fight, or a place to move their bowels, or to sleep. Their vacant gabbling and quacking discouraged him, and he was forced to seek relief by looking up into the eastern sky whose clouds were gradually growing more somber, darker to the northeast. The last hint of skyblue fell from the great height and flickered for Moss on the rippling surface of the pond — running a hundred yards around, forty yards in diameter, fourteen feet in depth, and stocked with tiny blue gills and Mississippi catfish, which one day someone would fish out.

The state had provided fish. But it was he who had planted small willows at the pond's edge enclosing it. Give them time — these willows would nurse at the earth and grow strong, would shade the pond. Here was something for others.

Moss lit his pipe and settled back against the squeaky leather seat of his cab and smoked quietly in the dark, hearing only the song of the birds that would skim the water for fish, or fly at their own reflection, scraping a wing against the heavy surface of the water. A breeze now was moving the child hair of the willows at the water's edge. How quiet they were, how quiet the wind in them. The calm of the place, seen partly through the thin veil of pipe smoke wreathing Moss in it, was like the force a man senses in crops growing, as in the evening blue of a sky, or noiseless colors of a sunset, or the floating, dropping, gliding of birds in the thick, invisible air, or of a lone goose afloat, or the wind in hair of the willow^s. This he would take from life, in return for what it had taken from his once young back and hands. He tugged on the line leading to his pocketwatch. Pulled the ticking piece out, pushed it away from his eyes until he could read its face in the last light, and put it back in place.

Still, the glow held on. He looked through the driver's windowspace into the small circular traffic mirror and saw the skyline behind him, stretched long and sharp and low, with the light being crushed beneath the night, slowly descending, falling steadily, as it did each night, every night. He noticed as the eye moved north along that western skyline, how dark it got, gradually paling, like every last summer day, mourning for the north, with its wagon trains and fervid women and screaming children, the cry of Indian raids raging in their ears, mourning maybe for the north where it was dark and finished, decayed and frozen dead. Finally, all the color changed, quickly now, from golden to silver, to lead. Moss's eyelids squinted into that mirror, flickered, like the thought of the night coming so finally on, flickered until the whole skyline jumped and trembled in the mirror, flickered while he thought how, when the light rose tomorrow, perhaps it would rise on Ronald and even on Junior; but he might be gone where the Western wagon trains were all gone, lying somewhere in the dark to the frozen north. The sky had lost its fight, and a breeze coming warmly across the prickled cornfields, picking up the rising heat, whisked it through the cab's open window, hitting the windshield and blowing back where Moss sat smoking.

He reached to the key and turned it. The motor groaned and he rode off the shoulder and onto the road that carried him past the fields and farms of his labor and on toward town. This night particularly, Moss was glad Bertha was not at home, her fat bulk filling up the living room, which her statuary of tiny hens and chickens and roosters was turning into a museum. Her figurines were as close as Bertha ever came to the country anymore. She was making up for lost time. Only she had never gone to school like the society ladies had. This one night he wanted to be alone.

The pickup made its familiar turns and twenty minutes later nosed into King Street, where it looked out of place among the pleasure cars at the curb. Moss saw Junior's car braked at the top of the driveway, so he pointed into the drive far enough to back out and turn around, and drove up against the curb at the front of the house.

He opened the door with a bang and stepped down the high step to the street and trudged with heavy feet slowly up the walk to a tiny porch. He stuffed his pipe stem into his pocket and pressed the tongue over the door handle and followed the door giving way inside the house.

He smelled the odor of food, baked beans for one thing. He called and stood still, head arched attentively, waiting for a reply. But he thought he heard the noise of wrapping paper coming from the kitchen. He walked right through the dark living room, caring not a thing for the statuary and, seeing a light, passed across the small dining room until he stood in the kitchen doorway.

Junior had his back turned and seemed to be wrapping the tops of vegetable jars with waxed paper and screwing their lids over it. Why didn't you answer me when I called?' He croaked, a touch of an old man's bad disposition enforcing his words. Junior turned slowly around. Though his head came only half way around to Moss, he had his left eye focused right on him. 'Hello,' he said, 'what kept you?

I've eaten and the food's all put away now.' 'Don't worry about the food. Just answer your father when he calls you, ya hear?' Junior turned back to his work on the kitchen table without answering, while Moss, solitary, stood watching the motions of body and arms and hands from behind.

When Junior had topped all the jars and set them on a shelf in the refrigerator, he turned and began to walk toward the opening Moss was filling with his body, waiting. 'Well, aren't you goin' to let me out? I've got things I gotta do.' 'Sure, sure, if you got chores, I ain't goin' t' stand in your way.'

Moss stepped aside and Junior, thirty-five years younger, towering a head above him, and perhaps thirtyfive pounds heavier, walked briskly by, still dressed in his shirt and coveralls, arms thick, long, brown, blond-haired, and muscular. Seeing him pass, Moss felt defeated, and with difficulty turned around and began moving weightily back through the dark dining room, toward the small lamp Junior stopped to light. 'You got a date t'night. Moss asked with sincerity that faltered in the stillness. He'd only known one girl Junior had ever taken out, and that was five years ago.

But a fella'd think at thirty it's time a man got interested in having a family. Junior hesitated at the dim lamp, his hand still on the switch, then turned sharply and said, mockingly, 'No, I haven't got a date and don't plan t' get none, either.

What the hell I want with a date, anyhow?' 'Don't you never want a fam—ily of your own?