Growth of the Soil quotes

The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest⁠—who trod it into being first of all?

Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came. Afterward, some beast or other, following the faint tracks over marsh and moorland, wearing them deeper;

“Why, he’s a rich man, and district treasurer besides.”

Love makes a fool of the wise.

Isak felt he must do something grand himself, and overdid it. “What I was going to say; you’ve no need to bother with hoeing potatoes. I’ll do it myself the evening, when I come home.”

She heard him felling in the woods, not so far off; she could hear from the crash that he was felling big timber. She listened for a while, and then went out to the potato field and set to work hoeing.

Love makes fools wise.

Isak came home in the evening, hauling a huge trunk by a rope. Oh, that simple and innocent Isak, he made all the noise he could with his tree-trunk, and coughed and hemmed, all for her to come out and wonder at him.

That was their way.

Lonely folk, ugly to look at and overfull of growth, but a blessing for each other, for the beasts, and for the earth.

And Goldenhorns calved. A great day in the wilderness, a joy and a delight. They gave her flour-wash, and Isak himself saw to it there was no stint of flour, though he had carried it all the way himself, on his back.

Potatoes were a new thing, nothing mystic, nothing religious; women and children could plant them—earth-apples that came from foreign parts, like coffee; fine rich food, but much like swedes and mangolds.

Corn was nothing less than bread; corn or no corn meant life or death.

Isak walked bareheaded, in Jesu name, a sower. Like a tree-stump with hands to look at, but in his heart like a child. Every cast was made with care, in a spirit of kindly resignation. Look!

Potatoes were a new thing, nothing mystic, nothing religious; women and children could plant them—earth-apples that came from foreign parts, like coffee; fine rich food, but much like swedes and mangolds. Corn was nothing less than bread; corn or no corn meant life or death.

Isak walked bareheaded, in Jesu name, a sower.

Like a tree-stump with hands to look at, but in his heart like a child. Every cast was made with care, in a spirit of kindly resignation. Look!

What was that about potatoes? Were they just a thing from foreign parts, like coffee; a luxury, an extra?

Oh, the potato is a lordly fruit; drought or downpour, it grows and grows all the same.

It laughs at the weather, and will stand anything; only deal kindly with it, and it yields fifteen-fold again. Not the blood of a grape, but the flesh of a chestnut, to be boiled or roasted, used in every way.

of fencing in all his cultivated ground; of building a boat on the lake up in the hills. Many things he had thought of doing. But hard as he worked, unreasonably hard—what did it help against time?

Time⁠—it was the time that was too short.

It was Sunday before he knew, and then directly after, lo it was Sunday again!

Paint he would, in any case; that was decided and emphatic.

The buildings stood there grey and bare⁠—stood there like houses in their shirt sleeves.

There was time yet before the busy season; the spring was hardly begun yet; the young things were out, but there was frost in the ground still.

For all his patience, Isak gave Brede a look and said: “Ay, I dare say you would.”

“Only that I’m not you,” said Isak.

Some of the workmen chuckled a little at this.

“Well, then, you won’t be able to manage it,” said she again.

Isak put up his hand to his hair⁠—it was like a bear lifting his paw.

“ ’Twas just that I’ve been fearing,” said he. “That I might not manage it. And that’s why I wanted you that’s learned so much to help me.”

There was trouble in his mind, like enough, but he bore it silently, and made no scene.

Oh, there was something great about Isak; as it might be Israel, promised and ever deceived, but still believing.

By Monday the tension was less marked, and as the days went on, the impression of that unhappy Saturday evening grew fainter. Time can mend a deal of things;

By Monday the tension was less marked, and as the days went on, the impression of that unhappy Saturday evening grew fainter.

Time can mend a deal of things; a spit and a shake, a meal and a good night’s rest, and it will heal the sorriest of wounds.

Isak’s trouble was not so bad as it might have been; after all, he was not certain that he had been wronged, and apart from that, he had other things to think of; the harvesting was at hand.

the girls and women from the village came but rarely now, for Inger no longer cared to see them. No one can live in the depth of the wilds and have time for such foolishness.

Happiness and nonsense are two different things.

In the wilds, each season has its wonders, but always, unchangingly, there is that immense heavy sound of heaven and earth, the sense of being surrounded on all sides, the darkness of the forest, the kindliness of the trees.

no use on earth. One evening Inger stood there listening for the cowbells; all was dead about her, she heard nothing, and then came a song from the tarn.

A little, little song, hardly there at all, almost lost. It was the tiny fishes’ song.

They had this good fortune at Sellanraa, that every spring and autumn they could see the grey geese sailing in fleets above that wilderness, and hear their chatter up in the air—delirious talk it was.

And the human souls beneath, did they not feel a weakness gliding through them now? They went to their work again, but drawing breath first; something had spoken to them, something from beyond.

Great marvels were about them at all times; in the winter were the stars; in winter often, too, the northern lights, a firmament of wings, a conflagration in the mansions of God.

Now and then, not often; not commonly, but now and then, they heard the thunder. It came mostly in the autumn, and a dark and solemn thing it was for man and beast; the animals grazing near home would bunch together and stand waiting.

Did they tread unexpectedly upon an ant, crushing its hind part fast to the path, so the fore part could not free itself again? Or step too near a white grouse nest, putting up a fluttering hissing mother to dash against them?

Even the big cow-mushrooms are not altogether meaningless; not a mere white emptiness in the eye.

The big mushroom does not flower, it does not move, but there is something overturning in the look of it; it is a monster, a thing like a lung standing there alive and naked—a lung without a body.

Or step too near a white grouse nest, putting up a fluttering hissing mother to dash against them? Even the big cow-mushrooms are not altogether meaningless; not a mere white emptiness in the eye.

The big mushroom does not flower, it does not move, but there is something overturning in the look of it; it is a monster, a thing like a lung standing there alive and naked⁠—a lung without a body.

Inger grew despondent at last, the wilds oppressed her, she turned religious. How could she help it? No one can help it in the wilds; life there is not all earthly toil and worldliness; there is piety and the fear of death and rich superstition.

“Sivert and I, we’ve been talking about this; we’re not going to have you sawing wood, and wearing yourself out.”

“I do it for conscience’ sake,” she answered.

Conscience! The word made Isak thoughtful once more. He was getting on in years, slow to think, but weighty when he did come to anything. Conscience must be something pretty strong if it could turn Inger all upside down like that.

He walked back home—no walking-stick, no whistling. He did not care about playing the man any longer.

A stab at the heart is no light matter.

And was that the last of it?

But this—this mowing-machine of his—’twas a crawling nest of steel springs and hooks and apparatus, and hundreds of screws—

Inger’s sewing-machine was a bookmarker compared with this!

Isak harnessed himself to the shafts and tried the thing. Here was the wonderful moment. And that was why he kept out of sight and was his own horse.

“No,” said his father, and walked on.

Swelling with mystery, full of pride; with a little lift and throw from the knee at every step, so emphatically did he walk.

So a brave man might walk to death and destruction, carrying no weapon in his hand.

Swelling with mystery, full of pride; with a little lift and throw from the knee at every step, so emphatically did he walk.

So a brave man might walk to death and destruction, carrying no weapon in his hand.

The boys came up with the horse, saw the machine, and stopped dead. It was the first mowing-machine in the wilds, the first in the village—red and blue, a thing of splendour to man’s eyes.

they’re milking, listen now; ’tis almost by way of something wonderful to hear, a kind of song in nothing but little streams, different from the brass bands in the town and the Salvation Army and the steamer sirens.

Music streaming into a pail.

…

And they had got on well together, too, after that last gift; but it could not last forever, far from it; and he could not go on buying rings to give her. In a word—did she mean to throw him over?

Women were strange creatures!

Was there a man with a good farm and a well-stocked place of his own waiting for her somewhere else? Axel could at times go so far as to strike his fist on the table in his impatience with women and their foolish humours.

“Leonardo da Vinci? Really? Well, of course, there are exceptions, otherwise there would be no rule. But on the whole. …”

“We pass protective measures for beast and bird,” said Geissler; “seems rather strange, doesn’t it, not to trouble about our own young?”

The advocate for the Crown reached out slowly and with dignity after some papers on the table, as a hint that he had not time to continue the discussion. “Yes. …” said he absently. “Yes, yes, no doubt. …”

He criticized it; ay, it was a round-faced, idiotic stone, no getting hold of it any way—he was almost inclined to say it was deformed. Blasting? The thing wasn’t worth a charge of powder.

And was he to give it up, was he to consider the possibility of being beaten by a stone?

He dug. Hard work, that it was, but as to giving up … At last he got the nose of his lever down and tried it; the stone did not move. Technically speaking, there was nothing wrong with his method, but it did not work.

Got so far, then—and that was something.

The stone was, so to speak, converted now, was on his side; they were working together.

Isak hoists and heaves with his lever, and the stone moves, but no more. He keeps at it a while, nothing more. All at once he understands that it is not merely a question of weight, the dead pull of his body;

But if it had come to this, that he could no longer go out alone and heave up a stone, why, things were sorely changed; ay, ’twas a bad lookout, and the more need to get that site cleared quick as might be.

Age was upon him, he was ripening for the chimney-corner.

The triumph he had stolen in the matter of the door-slab faded away in a few days; ’twas a false thing, and not made to last. Isak stooped a little now in his walk.

she is bound for a place, to commence another struggle there. She has never spared herself, to tell the truth, never been of a lazy sort, and that is why she has her neat figure now and pretty shape.

Barbro is quick to learn things, and often to her own undoing; what else could one expect?

She had learned to save herself at a pinch, to slip from one scrape to another, but keeping all along some better qualities; a child’s death is nothing to her, but she can still give sweets to a child alive.

there were things he was obliged to do, and he looked to what was useful first of all. Moreover, here was Barbro all new and pretty again, and nice to him, almost sweeter than before.

Like an apple she was, and he bit at it.

The banns were already put up.

But Oline, she died that night—some time in the night; anyway, she was cold next morning when they came in.

Oline⁠—an aged creature. Born and died.⁠ ⁠…

’Twas no sorrow to Axel nor Barbro to bury her, and be quit of her forever; there was less to be on their guard against now, they could be at rest. Barbro is having trouble with her teeth again; save for that, all is well.

But Barbro is losing all patience with this debate, and bursts out, crying aloud, crying like a deeply injured creature: “Nay, you can take and bury me, too, in the ground, and then you’ll be rid of me.”

Strange, what odd things a woman can find to cry for!

Axel had never a thought of, burying her in the ground; he is a thick-skinned fellow, looking mainly to what is useful; a pathway carpeted with flowers is beyond his needs.

Strange, what odd things a woman can find to cry for!

Axel had never a thought of, burying her in the ground; he is a thick-skinned fellow, looking mainly to what is useful; a pathway carpeted with flowers is beyond his needs.

“Then you’ll not be fit to work in the fields this summer?” says he.

All sound and working well; all good reality. And little to fear from Brede about the telegraph line, seeing he’s son-in-law to Brede now.

Ay, things are looking well, looking grand with Axel now.

She was getting stouter, growing fine and stately. A wonderful woman to keep from fading, keep from dying off by degrees; like enough because she had bloomed so late in life. Who can say how things come about?

Nothing comes from a single cause, but from many.

Was Inger not in the best repute with the smith’s wife? What could any smith’s wife say against her? With her disfigurement, she had been cheated of her spring, and later, had been set in artificial air to lose six years of her summer;

’Tis not everyone has cakes with their coffee, say the village folk. Ay, Bredes are doing well, it seems; they even manage to keep a dog, that goes round begging among the customers and gets bits here and there and grows fat on it.

A good fat dog about the place is a mighty fine advertisement for a lodging-house; it speaks for good feeding anywhere.

Brede, then, is husband and father in the house, and apart from that position, has got on variously beside. He had been once more installed as Lensmand’s assistant and deputy, and had a good deal to do that way for a time.