Rose Wilder Lane

Masonville slipped quietly to sleep, like an old man sitting in the sun with his memories.

In the cities, where men work against men, let them build up artificial distinctions; on the farm the fight is against nature, and men stand shoulder to shoulder in it.

The epic had ended in bad verse.

Altogether it was a beautiful disorder, enough to delight any small boy.

The words were like a defensive armor between her and her real desire.

“Every clock in the house shuddered when it saw me coming,” he says.

There was something piteous about her, as there is about a little trained animal on the stage, set to do tasks for which it is not fitted.

“When your reasonable expenses exceed your income, increase your income.”

“If you’d only tend to your own affairs, you good people!”

“We should be guiding our future by the present, instead of being guided in the present by the past.”

Beneath their gaiety a ceaseless game was being played, man against woman, and every word and glance was a move in that game, the basis of which was enmity.

“A wife helps a man more than any one else,” he says to-day. And adds, with his whimsical twinkle, “she criticizes him more.”

She did not want to work, she wanted to live.

“The only plan that will work out well in the long run is a plan that is best for every one concerned,” he decided.

The abyss between them was left bridged only by the things they had not said, fearing to make it forever impassable by saying them.

There is no use in our living if we can’t do things better than our fathers did.

“The roof is off the sky tonight. This is a wedding-party!”

But Henry was firm, with a determination which is called obstinacy when it goes with failure and great will power when it is coupled with success.

She had learned that men were infuriated by three things; questions, babies, and a woman who was ill.

A manager spends his time and thought on the poor workmen; a good man he leaves alone.