from Little House on the Prairie, chapter 2, Crossing the Creek (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

'This creek's pretty high,' Pa said.  'But I guess we can make it all right.  You can see this is a ford, by the old wheel ruts.  What do you say, Caroline?'

'Whatever you say, Charles,' Ma answered.

Pet and Patty lifted their wet noses.  They pricked their ears forward, looking at the creek; then they pricked them backward to hear what Pa would say.  They sighed and laid their soft noses together to whisper to each other.  A little way upstream, Jack was lapping the water with his red tongue.

'I'll tie down the wagon-cover,' Pa said.  He climbed down from the seat, unrolled the canvas sides and tied them firmly to the wagon-box.  Then he pulled the rope at the back, so that the canvas puckered together in the middle, leaving only a tiny round hole, too small to see through.

Mary huddled down on the bed.  She did not like fords; she was afraid of the rushing water.  But Laura was excited; she liked the splashing.  Pa climbed to the seat, saying, 'They may have to swim, out there in the middle.  But we'll make it all right, Caroline.'

Laura thought of Jack and said, 'I wish Jack could ride in the wagon, Pa.'

Pa did not answer.  He gathered the reins tightly in his hands.  Ma said, 'Jack can swim, Laura.  He will be all right.'

The wagon went forward softly in mud.  Water began to splash against the wheels.  The splashing grew louder.  The wagon shook as the noisy water struck at it.  Then all at once the wagon lifted and balanced and swayed.  It was a lovely feeling.

The noise stopped, and Ma said, sharply, 'Lie down, girls!'

Quick as a flash, Mary and Laura dropped flat on the bed.  When Ma spoke like that, they did as they were told.  Ma's arm pulled a smothering blanket over them, heads and all.

'Be still, just as you are.  Don't move!' she said.

Mary did not move; she was trembling and still.  But Laura could not help wriggling a little bit.  She did so want to see what was happening.  She could feel the wagon swaying and turning; the splashing was noisy again, and again it died away.  Then Pa's voice frightened Laura.  It said, 'Take them, Caroline!'

The wagon lurched; there was a sudden heavy splash beside it.  Laura sat straight up and clawed the blanket from her head.

Pa was gone.  Ma sat alone, holding tight to the reins with both hands.  Mary hid her face in the blanket again, but Laura rose up farther.  She couldn't see the creek bank.  She couldn't see anything in front of the wagon but water rushing at it.  And in the water, three heads; Pet's head and Patty's head and Pa's small, wet head.  Pa's fist in the water was holding tight to Pet's bridle.

Laura could faintly hear Pa's voice through the rushing of the water.  It sounded calm and cheerful, but she couldn't hear what he said.  He was talking to the horses.  Ma's face was white and scared.

'Lie down, Laura,' Ma said.

Laura lay down.  She felt cold and sick.  Her eyes were shut tight, but she could still see the terrible water and Pa's brown beard drowning in it.

For a long, long time the wagon swayed and swung, and Mary cried without making a sound, and Laura's stomach felt sicker and sicker.  Then the front wheels struck and grated, and Pa shouted.  The whole wagon jerked and jolted and tipped backward, but the wheels were turning on the ground.  Laura was up again, holding to the seat; she saw Pet's and Patty's scrambling wet backs climbing a steep bank, and Pa running beside them, shouting, 'Hi, Patty!  Hi, Pet!  Get up!  Get up!  Whoopsy-daisy!  Good girls!'

At the top of the bank they stood still, panting and dripping.  And the wagon stood still, safely out of that creek.

from Farmer Boy, chapter 15, Cold Snap (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

 The air was still and cold that night, and the stars had a wintry look.  After supper Father went to the barns again.  He shut the doors and the little wooden windows of the horses' stalls, and he put the ewes with their lambs into the fold.

When he came in, Mother asked if it was any warmer.  Father shook his head.

'I do believe it is going to freeze,' he said.

'Pshaw! surely not!' Mother replied. But she looked worried.

Sometime in the night Almanzo felt cold, but he was too sleepy to do anything about it. Then he heard Mother calling:

'Royal! Almanzo!' He was too sleepy to open his eyes.

'Boys, get up! Hurry!' Mother called. 'The corn's frozen!'

He tumbled out of bed and pulled on his trousers. He couldn't keep his eyes open, his hands were clumsy, and big yawns almost dislocated his jaw. He staggered downstairs behind Royal.

Mother and Eliza Jane and Alice were putting on their hoods and shawls.  The kitchen was cold; the fire had not been lighted.  Outdoors everything looked strange.  The grass was white with frost, and a cold green streak was in the eastern sky, but the air was dark.

Father hitched Bess and Beauty to the wagon.  Royal pumped the watering-trough full.  Almanzo helped Mother and the girls bring tubs and pails, and Father set barrels in the wagon.  They filled the tubs and barrels full of water, and then they walked behind the wagon to the cornfield.

All the corn was frozen.  The little leaves were stiff, and broke if you touched them.  Only cold water would save the life of the corn.  Every hill must be watered before the sunshine touched it, or the little plants would die.  There would be no corn-crop that year.

The wagon stopped at the edge of the field.  Father and Mother and Royal and Eliza Jane and Alice and Almanzo filled their pails with water, and they all went to work, as fast as they could.

Almanzo tried to hurry, but the pail was heavy and his legs were short.  His wet fingers were cold, the water slopped against his legs, and he was terribly sleepy.  He stumbled along the rows, and at every hill of corn he poured a little water over the frozen leaves.

The field seemed enormous.  There were thousands and thousands of hills of corn.  Almanzo began to be hungry.  But he couldn't stop to complain.  He must hurry, hurry, hurry, to save the corn.

The green in the east turned pink.  Every moment the light brightened.  At first the dark had been like a mist over the endless field, now Almanzo could see to the end of the long rows.  He tried to work faster.

In an instant the earth turned from black to grey.  The sun was coming to kill the corn.

Almanzo ran to fill his pail; he ran back.  He ran down the rows, splashing water on the hills of corn.  His shoulders ached and his arm ached and there was a pain in his side.  The soft earth hung on to his feet.  He was terribly hungry.  But every splash of water saved a hill of corn.

In the grey light the corn had faint shadows now.  All at once pale sunshine came over the field.

'Keep on!' Father shouted.  So they all kept on; they didn't stop.

But in a little while Father gave up.  'No use!' he called.  Nothing would save the corn after the sunshine touched it.

Almanzo set down his pail and straightened up against the ache in his back.  He stood and looked at the cornfield.  All the others stood and looked, too, and did not say anything.  They had watered almost three acres.  A quarter of an acre had not been watered.  It was lost.

Almanzo trudged back to the wagon and climbed in.  Father said:

'Let's be thankful we saved most of it.'

They rode sleepily down to the barns.  Almanzo was not quite awake yet, and he was tired and cold and hungry.  His hands were clumsy, doing the chores.  But most of the corn was saved.

from Farmer Boy (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

 The kitchen was full of hoopskirts, balancing and swirling ...

... Almanzo tried to fill more baskets than Alice, but he couldn't.  She worked so fast that she was turning back to the bin while her hoopskirts were still whirling the other way.

from Augustine and the Fundamentalist's Daughter, chapter 5, Staying Is Nowhere (Margaret R. Miles)

After my first divorce, when I was poor and alone, I learned to console myself by thinking of people who were rich and happy in love.  Remembering this condition, recognizing its actual existence somewhere in the world, made me happy too.  To imagine those feelings was to participate in them.  That learning, over forty years ago, still helps me when I feel anguish over my inability to help my son, and suffer from the irony that I have spent my life teaching other people's children.  But I can help others' children, and so I do.  And I hope that, in the broader generosity of the universe, there will be someone who can help my son.  I endeavor to rest in the knowledge of this"enough", enough to go around, enough for all, if we will only cease trying to stipulate from whom/where it must come, but simply wait with confidence and accept with gratitude.

from The Long Winter, chapter 30, It Can't Beat Us

Winter had lasted so long that it seemed it would never end. It seemed that they would never really wake up.

In the morning Laura got out of bed into the cold. She dressed downstairs by the fire that Pa had kindled before he went to the stable. They ate their coarse brown bread. Then all day long she and Ma and Mary ground wheat and twisted hay as fast as they could. The fire must not go out; it was very cold. They ate some coarse brown bread. Then Laura crawled into the cold bed and shivered until she grew warm enough to sleep.

Next morning she got out of bed into the cold. She dressed in the chilly kitchen by the fire. She ate her coarse brown bread. She took her turns at grinding wheat and twisting hay. But she did not ever feel awake. She felt beaten by the cold and the storms.

She knew she was dull and stupid but she could not wake up.

There were no more lessons. There was nothing in the world but cold and dark and work and coarse brown bread and winds blowing. The storm was always there, outside the walls, waiting sometimes, then pouncing, shaking the house, roaring, snarling, and screaming in rage.

Out of bed in the morning to hurry down and dress by the fire. Then work all day to crawl into a cold bed at night and fall asleep as soon as she grew warm. The winter had lasted so long. It would never end.

Bright College Days (Tom Lehrer)

Bright college days, oh carefree days that fly, 
To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high.
Let's drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.

Turn on the spigot,
Pour the beer and swig it,
And gaudeamus igit-uh-tur!

Here's to parties we tossed,
To the games that we lost
(We shall claim that we won them some day),

To the girls young and sweet,
To the spacious back seat
Of our roommate's beat up Chevrolet,

To the beer and benzedrine,
To the way that the dean
Tried so hard to be pals with us all,

To excuses we fibbed,
To the papers we cribbed
From the genius who lived down the hall,

To the tables down at Morey's
(Wherever that may be) -
Let us drink a toast to all we love the best.
We will sleep through all the lectures
And cheat on the exams,
And we'll pass, and be forgotten with the rest.

Oh,
Soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife,
Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life ...

But as we go our sordid sep'rate ways,
We shall ne'er forget thee, thou golden college days.

Hearts full of youth!
Hearts full of truth!
Six parts gin to one part vermouth!

from My Ántonia, book III, Lena Lingard, chapter II

I propped my book open and stared listlessly at the page of the 'Georgics' where to-morrow's lesson began. It opened with the melancholy reflection that, in the lives of mortals, the best days are the first to flee. 'Optima dies . . . prima fugit.' I turned back to the beginning of the third book, which we had read in class that morning. 'Primus ego in patriam mecum . . . deducam Musas'; 'for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country.' Cleric had explained to us that 'patria' here meant, not a nation or even a province, but the little rural neighbourhood on the Mincio where the poet was born. This was not a boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, that he might bring the Muse (but lately come to Italy from her cloudy Grecian mountains), not to the capital, the palatia Romana, but to his own little 'country'; to his father's fields, 'sloping down to the river and to the old beech trees with broken tops.'

Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at Brindisi, must have remembered that passage. After he had faced the bitter fact that he was to leave the 'Aeneid' unfinished, and had decreed that the great canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men, should be burned rather than survive him unperfected, then his mind must have gone back to the perfect utterance of the 'Georgics,' where the pen was fitted to the matter as the plough is to the furrow; and he must have said to himself, with the thankfulness of a good man, 'I was the first to bring the Muse into my country.'

We left the classroom quietly, conscious that we had been brushed by the wing of a great feeling, though perhaps I alone knew Cleric intimately enough to guess what that feeling was.  In the evening, as I sat staring at my book, the fervour of his voice stirred through the quantities on the page before  me. I was wondering whether that particular rocky strip of New England coast about which he had so often told me was Cleric's patria.  Before I had got far with my reading, I was disturbed by a knock. I hurried to the door and when I opened it saw a woman standing in the dark hall.

from Clover, chapter VII, Making Acquaintance (Susan Coolidge)

The sun was very hot; but there was a delicious breeze, and the dryness and elasticity of the air made the heat easy to bear.

The way lay across and down the southern slope of the plateau on which the town was built. Then they came to splendid fields of grain and 'afalfa, - a cereal quite new to them, with broad, very green leaves. The roadside was gay with flowers, - gillias and mountain balm; high pink and purple spikes, like foxgloves, which they were told were pentstemons; painters' brush, whose green tips seemed dipped in liquid vermilion, and masses of the splendid wild poppies. They crossed a foaming little river; and a sharp turn brought them into a narrower and wilder road, which ran straight toward the mountain side. This was overhung by trees, whose shade was grateful after the hot sun.

Narrower and narrower grew the road, more and more sharp the turns. They were at the entrance of a deep defile, up which the road wound and wound, following the links of the river, which they crossed and recrossed repeatedly. Such a wonderful and perfect little river, with water clear as air and cold as ice, flowing over a bed of smooth granite, here slipping noiselessly down long slopes of rock like thin films of glass, there deepening into pools of translucent blue-green like aqua-marine or beryl, again plunging down in mimic waterfalls, a sheet of iridescent foam. The sound of its rush and its ripple was like a laugh. Never was such happy water, Clover thought, as it curved and bent and swayed this way and that on its downward course as if moved by some merry, capricious instinct, like a child dancing as it goes. Regiments or great ferns grew along its banks, and immense thickets of wild roses of all shades, from deep Jacqueminot red to pale blush-white. Here and there rose a lonely spike of yucca, and in the little ravines to right and left grew in the crevices of the rocks clumps of superb straw-colored columbines four feet high.

Looking up, Clover saw above the tree-tops strange pinnacles and spires and obelisks which seemed air-hung, of purple-red and orange-tawny and pale pinkish gray and terra cotta, in which the sunshine and the cloud-shadows broke in a multiplicity of wonderful half-tints. Above them was the dazzling blue of the Colorado sky. She drew a long, long breath.

'So this is a canyon,' she said. 'How glad I am that I have lived to see one.'

from Tinkers, chapter 3 (Paul Harding)

It seemed to me as if my father simply faded away. He became more and more difficult to see. One day, I thought he was sitting in his chair at his desk, writing. To all appearances, he scribbled at a sheet of paper. When I asked him where the bag for apple picking was, he disappeared. I could not tell whether he had been there in the first place or if I had asked my question to some lingering afterimage. He leaked out of the world gradually, though. At first, he seemed merely vague or peripheral. But then he could no longer furnish the proper frame for his clothes. He would ask me a question from behind the box on which I sat shelling peas or peeling potatoes for my mother, and when I answered and received no reply back, I would turn around, to find his hat or belt or a single shoe sitting in the door frame as if placed there by a mischievous child. The end came when we could no longer even see him, but felt him in brief disturbances of shadows or light, or as a slight pressure, as if the space one occupied suddenly had had something more packed into it, or we’d catch some faint scent out of season, such as the snow melting into the wool of his winter coat, but on a blistering August noon, as if the last few times I felt him as another being rather than as a recollection, he had thought to check up on this world at the wrong moment and accidentally stepped from whatever wintry place he was in straight into the dog days. And it seems that doing so only confirmed to him his fate to fade away, his being in the wrong place, so that during these startled visits, although I could not see him, I could feel his surprise, his bafflement, the dismay felt in a dream when you suddenly meet the brother you forgot you had or remember the infant you left on the hillside miles away, hours ago, because somehow you were distracted and somehow you came to believe in a different life and your shock at these terrible recollections, these sudden reunions, comes as much from your sorrow at what you have neglected as it does from dismay at how thoroughly and quickly you came to believe in something else. And that other world that you first dreamed is always better if not real, because in it you have not jilted your lover, forsaken your child, turned your back on your brother. The world fell away from my father the way he fell away from us. We became his dream.

Another time, I found him fumbling for an apple in the barrel we kept in the basement. I could just make him out in the gloom. Each time he tried to grab a piece of fruit, it eluded him, or I might say he eluded it, as his grasp was no stronger than a draft of air threading through a crack in a window. He succeeded once, after appearing to concentrate for a moment, in upsetting an apple from its place at the top of the pile, but it merely tumbled down along the backs of the other apples and came to rest against the mouth of the barrel. It seemed to me that even if I could pick an apple up with my failing hands, how could I bite it with my dissipating teeth, digest it with my ethereal gut? I realized that this thought was not my own but, rather, my father’s, that even his ideas were leaking out of his former self. Hands, teeth, gut, thoughts even, were all simply more or less convenient to human circumstance, and as my father was receding from human circumstance, so, too, were all of these particulars, back to some unknowable froth where they might be reassigned to stars or belt buckles, lunar dust or railroad spikes. Perhaps they already were all of these things and my father’s fading was because he realized this: My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels, now and then, here and there; the iron in my blood was once the blade of a Roman plow; peel back my scalp and you will see my cranium covered in the scrimshaw carved by an ancient sailor who never suspected that he was whittling at my skull – no, my blood is a Roman plow, my bones are being etched by men with names that mean sea wrestler and ocean rider and the pictures they are making are pictures of northern stars at different seasons, and the man keeping my blood straight as it splits the soil is named Lucian and he will plant wheat, and I cannot concentrate on this apple, this apple, and the only thing common to all of this is that I feel sorrow so deep, it must be love, and they are upset because while they are carving and plowing they are troubled by visions of trying to pick apples from barrels. I looked away and ran back upstairs, skipping the ones that creaked, so that I would not embarrass my father, who had not quite yet turned back from clay into light.

from My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George)

Frightful and I went to the meadow when the meal was done, and I flopped in the grass.  The stars came up, the ground smelled sweet, and I closed my eyes.  I heard, 'Pip, pop, pop, pop.'

'Who's making that noise?' I said sleepily to Frightful.  She ruffled her feathers.

I listened.  'Pop, pip.'  I rolled over and stuck my face in the grass.  Something gleamed beneath me, and in the fading light I could see an earthworm coming out of its hole.

Nearby another one arose and there was a pop.  Little bubbles of air snapped as these voiceless animals of the earth came to the surface.  That got me to smiling.  I was glad to know this about earthworms.  I don't why, but this seemed like one of the nicest things I had learned in the woods - that earthworms, lowly, confined to the darkness of the earth, could make just a little stir in the world.

from Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)

But I wished to say certain things about the Fifth Commandment, and why it should be thought of as belonging to the first tablet.  Briefly, the right worship of God is essential because it forms the mind to a right understanding of God.  God is set apart - He is One, He is not to be imagined as a thing among things (idolatry - this is what Feuerbach failed to grasp).  His name is set apart.  It is sacred (which I take to be a reflection of the sacredness of the Word, the creative utterance which is not of a kind with other language).  Then the Sabbath is set apart from other days, for the enjoyment of time and duration, perhaps, over and above the creatures who inhabit time.  Because 'the beginning,' which might be called the seed of time, is the condition for all the creation that follows.  Then mother and father are set apart, you see.  It seems to me almost a retelling of Creation - First there is the Lord, then the Word, then the Day, then the Man and Woman - and after that Cain and Abel - Thou shalt not kill - and all the sins recorded in those prohibitions, just as crimes are recorded in the laws against them.  So perhaps the tablets differ as addressing the eternal and the temporal.