This is America⁠—a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves. The town is, in our tale, called “Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.” But its Main Street is the continu...

On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky. She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinkin...

On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky. She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinkin...

Blodgett College is on the edge of Minneapolis. It is a bulwark of sound religion. It is still combating the recent heresies of Voltaire, Darwin, and Robert Ingersoll. Pious families in Minnesota, Iow...

Though she was Minnesota-born Carol was not an intimate of the prairie villages. Her father, the smiling and shabby, the learned and teasingly kind, had come from Massachusetts, and through all her ch...

In a month Carol’s ambition had clouded. Her hesitancy about becoming a teacher had returned. She was not, she worried, strong enough to endure the routine, and she could not picture herself standing ...

The last faculty reception before commencement. In five days they would be in the cyclone of final examinations. The house of the president had been massed with palms suggestive of polite undertaking ...

A year Carol spent in Chicago. Her study of library-cataloguing, recording, books of reference, was easy and not too somniferous. She reveled in the Art Institute, in symphonies and violin recitals an...

Carol was not unhappy and she was not exhilarated, in the St. Paul Library. She slowly confessed that she was not visibly affecting lives. She did, at first, put into her contact with the patrons a wi...

It was a frail and blue and lonely Carol who trotted to the flat of the Johnson Marburys for Sunday evening supper. Mrs. Marbury was a neighbor and friend of Carol’s sister; Mr. Marbury a traveling re...

It was a frail and blue and lonely Carol who trotted to the flat of the Johnson Marburys for Sunday evening supper. Mrs. Marbury was a neighbor and friend of Carol’s sister; Mr. Marbury a traveling re...

Of the lovemaking of Carol and Will Kennicott there is nothing to be told which may not be heard on every summer evening, on every shadowy block. They were biology and mystery; their speech was slang ...

Under the rolling clouds of the prairie a moving mass of steel. An irritable clank and rattle beneath a prolonged roar. The sharp scent of oranges cutting the soggy smell of unbathed people and ancien...

Under the rolling clouds of the prairie a moving mass of steel. An irritable clank and rattle beneath a prolonged roar. The sharp scent of oranges cutting the soggy smell of unbathed people and ancien...

To each of the passengers his seat was his temporary home, and most of the passengers were slatternly housekeepers. But one seat looked clean and deceptively cool. In it were an obviously prosperous m...

That one word⁠—home⁠—it terrified her. Had she really bound herself to live, inescapably, in this town called Gopher Prairie? And this thick man beside her, who dared to define her future, he was a st...

A concrete sidewalk with a “parking” of grass and mud. A square smug brown house, rather damp. A narrow concrete walk up to it. Sickly yellow leaves in a windrow with dried wings of box-elder seeds an...

“The Clarks have invited some folks to their house to meet us, tonight,” said Kennicott, as he unpacked his suitcase. “Oh, that is nice of them!” “You bet. I told you you’d like ’em. Squarest people o...

“The Clarks have invited some folks to their house to meet us, tonight,” said Kennicott, as he unpacked his suitcase. “Oh, that is nice of them!” “You bet. I told you you’d like ’em. Squarest people o...

When Carol had walked for thirty-two minutes she had completely covered the town, east and west, north and south; and she stood at the corner of Main Street and Washington Avenue and despaired. Main S...

The train which brought Carol to Gopher Prairie also brought Miss Bea Sorenson. Miss Bea was a stalwart, corn-colored, laughing young woman, and she was bored by farm-work. She desired the excitements...

The recently built house of Sam Clark, in which was given the party to welcome Carol, was one of the largest in Gopher Prairie. It had a clean sweep of clapboards, a solid squareness, a small tower, a...

“We’ll steal the whole day, and go hunting. I want you to see the country round here,” Kennicott announced at breakfast. “I’d take the car⁠—want you to see how swell she runs since I put in a new pist...

“We’ll steal the whole day, and go hunting. I want you to see the country round here,” Kennicott announced at breakfast. “I’d take the car⁠—want you to see how swell she runs since I put in a new pist...

Till they had a maid they took noon dinner and six o’clock supper at Mrs. Gurrey’s boardinghouse. Mrs. Elisha Gurrey, relict of Deacon Gurrey the dealer in hay and grain, was a pointed-nosed, simperin...

From the Gopher Prairie Weekly Dauntless: One of the most charming affairs of the season was held Tuesday evening at the handsome new residence of Sam and Mrs. Clark when many of our most prominent ci...

She knew that if she was ever to effect any of the “reforms” which she had pictured, she must have a starting-place. What confused her during the three or four months after her marriage was not lack o...

But she hazily wanted someone to whom she could say what she thought. On a slow afternoon when she fidgeted over sewing and wished that the telephone would ring, Bea announced Miss Vida Sherwin. Despi...

When the first dubious November snow had filtered down, shading with white the bare clods in the plowed fields, when the first small fire had been started in the furnace, which is the shrine of a Goph...

When the first dubious November snow had filtered down, shading with white the bare clods in the plowed fields, when the first small fire had been started in the furnace, which is the shrine of a Goph...

Carol was extravagant, but at least she did not try to clear herself of blame by going about whimpering, “I know I’m terribly extravagant but I don’t seem to be able to help it.” Kennicott had never t...

Mrs. Bogart had, by the simpering viciousness of her comments on the new furniture, stirred Carol to economy. She spoke judiciously to Bea about leftovers. She read the cookbook again and, like a chil...

She had reached the calmness of not caring whether her guests liked the party or not, and a state of satisfied suspense in regard to Bea’s technique in serving, before Kennicott cried from the bay-win...

From the Weekly Dauntless: One of the most delightful social events of recent months was held Wednesday evening in the housewarming of Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott, who have completely redecorated their cha...

The week after, the Chet Dashaways gave a party. The circle of mourners kept its place all evening, and Dave Dyer did the “stunt” of the Norwegian and the hen....

Gopher Prairie was digging in for the winter. Through late November and all December it snowed daily; the thermometer was at zero and might drop to twenty below, or thirty. Winter is not a season in t...

Gopher Prairie was digging in for the winter. Through late November and all December it snowed daily; the thermometer was at zero and might drop to twenty below, or thirty. Winter is not a season in t...

She had, she meditated, passed through the novelty of seeing the town and meeting people, of skating and sliding and hunting. Bea was competent; there was no household labor except sewing and darning ...

A thaw which stripped the snow from the sidewalks; a ringing iron night when the lakes could be heard booming; a clear roistering morning. In tam o’shanter and tweed skirt Carol felt herself a college...

The Jolly Seventeen (the membership of which ranged from fourteen to twenty-six) was the social cornice of Gopher Prairie. It was the country club, the diplomatic set, the St. Cecilia, the Ritz oval r...

“Don’t I, in looking for things to do, show that I’m not attentive enough to Will? Am I impressed enough by his work? I will be. Oh, I will be. If I can’t be one of the town, if I must be an outcast⁠—...

“Don’t I, in looking for things to do, show that I’m not attentive enough to Will? Am I impressed enough by his work? I will be. Oh, I will be. If I can’t be one of the town, if I must be an outcast⁠—...

Four days after the Jolly Seventeen debacle Vida Sherwin called and casually blew Carol’s world to pieces. “May I come in and gossip a while?” she said, with such excess of bright innocence that Carol...

Kennicott was yawning, stretched in the largest chair, between the radiator and a small kerosene stove. Cautiously, “Will dear, I wonder if the people here don’t criticize me sometimes? They must. I m...

She had tripped into the meadow to teach the lambs a pretty educational dance and found that the lambs were wolves. There was no way out between their pressing gray shoulders. She was surrounded by fa...

She had tripped into the meadow to teach the lambs a pretty educational dance and found that the lambs were wolves. There was no way out between their pressing gray shoulders. She was surrounded by fa...

No group angered her quite so much as these staring young roués. She had tried to convince herself that the village, with its fresh air, its lakes for fishing and swimming, was healthier than the arti...

She remembered, and tried to forget, and remembered more sharply the vulgar detail of her husband’s having observed the ancient customs of the land by chewing tobacco. She would have preferred a prett...

Kennicott had taken her north to Lac-qui-Meurt, in the Big Woods. It was the entrance to a Chippewa Indian reservation, a sandy settlement among Norway pines on the shore of a huge snow-glaring lake. ...

Vida Sherwin ran in after school a dozen times. She was tactful, torrentially anecdotal. She had scuttled about town and plucked compliments: Mrs. Dr. Westlake had pronounced Carol a “very sweet, brig...

Through her weeks of cowering there was no change in her surface life. No one save Vida was aware of her agonizing. On her most despairing days she chatted to women on the street, in stores. But witho...

The house was haunted, long before evening. Shadows slipped down the walls and waited behind every chair. Did that door move? No. She wouldn’t go to the Jolly Seventeen. She hadn’t energy enough to ca...

The house was haunted, long before evening. Shadows slipped down the walls and waited behind every chair. Did that door move? No. She wouldn’t go to the Jolly Seventeen. She hadn’t energy enough to ca...

She was thinking more sharply than she had for weeks. She reverted to her resolution to change the town⁠—awaken it, prod it, “reform” it. What if they were wolves instead of lambs? They’d eat her all ...

A black February day. Clouds hewn of ponderous timber weighing down on the earth; an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The lines of roofs...

Kennicott had returned at midnight. At breakfast he said four several times that he had missed her every moment. On her way to market Sam Clark hailed her, “The top o’ the mornin’ to yez! Going to sto...

She did not, in recovering something of her buoyancy, forget her determination to begin the liberalizing of Gopher Prairie by the easy and agreeable propaganda of teaching Kennicott to enjoy reading p...

She went to the Jolly Seventeen’s afternoon bridge. She had learned the elements of the game from the Sam Clarks. She played quietly and reasonably badly. She had no opinions on anything more polemic ...

She had often been invited to the weekly meetings of the Thanatopsis, the women’s study club, but she had put it off. The Thanatopsis was, Vida Sherwin promised, “such a cozy group, and yet it puts yo...

She had often been invited to the weekly meetings of the Thanatopsis, the women’s study club, but she had put it off. The Thanatopsis was, Vida Sherwin promised, “such a cozy group, and yet it puts yo...

She examined the city hall, next morning. She had remembered it only as a bleak inconspicuousness. She found it a liver-colored frame coop half a block from Main Street. The front was an unrelieved wa...

At a quarter to three Carol had left home; at half-past four she had created the Georgian town; at a quarter to five she was in the dignified poverty of the Congregational parsonage, her enthusiasm pa...

The first week of March had given promise of spring and stirred Carol with a thousand desires for lakes and fields and roads. The snow was gone except for filthy woolly patches under trees, the thermo...

Carol had avoided exposing her plans to Vida Sherwin. She was shy of the big-sister manner; Vida would either laugh at her or snatch the idea and change it to suit herself. But there was no other hope...

Early May; wheat springing up in blades like grass; corn and potatoes being planted; the land humming. For two days there had been steady rain. Even in town the roads were a furrowed welter of mud, hi...

She had met Miles Bjornstam on the street. For the second of welcome encounter this workman with the bandit mustache and the muddy overalls seemed nearer than anyone else to the credulous youth which ...

The spring of the plains is not a reluctant virgin but brazen and soon away. The mud roads of a few days ago are powdery dust and the puddles beside them have hardened into lozenges of black sleek ear...

One week of authentic spring, one rare sweet week of May, one tranquil moment between the blast of winter and the charge of summer. Daily Carol walked from town into flashing country hysteric with new...

One week of authentic spring, one rare sweet week of May, one tranquil moment between the blast of winter and the charge of summer. Daily Carol walked from town into flashing country hysteric with new...

Through the first days of June she drove with Kennicott on his calls. She identified him with the virile land; she admired him as she saw with what respect the farmers obeyed him. She was out in the e...

Carol had started a salon. Since Kennicott, Vida Sherwin, and Guy Pollock were her only lions, and since Kennicott would have preferred Sam Clark to all the poets and radicals in the entire world, her...

Carol’s hero-worship dwindled to polite nodding, and the nodding dwindled to a desire to escape, and she went home with a headache. Next day she saw Miles Bjornstam on the street. “Just back from Mont...

She tried, more from loyalty than from desire, to call upon the Perrys on a November evening when Kennicott was away. They were not at home. Like a child who has no one to play with she loitered throu...

She was marching home. “No. I couldn’t fall in love with him. I like him, very much. But he’s too much of a recluse. Could I kiss him? No! No! Guy Pollock at twenty-six I could have kissed him then, m...

That December she was in love with her husband. She romanticized herself not as a great reformer but as the wife of a country physician. The realities of the doctor’s household were colored by her pri...

That December she was in love with her husband. She romanticized herself not as a great reformer but as the wife of a country physician. The realities of the doctor’s household were colored by her pri...

Familiar to the doctor’s wife was the man with an injured leg, driven in from the country on a Sunday afternoon and brought to the house. He sat in a rocker in the back of a lumber-wagon, his face pal...

He had been gone since morning; her eyes ached with reading; Vida Sherwin could not come to tea. She wandered through the house, empty as the bleary street without. The problem of “Will the doctor be ...

There were, to inform the doctor’s wife of his successes, no clapping audiences nor book-reviews nor honorary degrees. But there was a letter written by a German farmer recently moved from Minnesota t...

She encountered Guy Pollock at the drug store. He looked at her as though he had a right to; he spoke softly. “I haven’t see you, the last few days.” “No. I’ve been out in the country with Will severa...

She could⁠—at times⁠—agree with Kennicott that the shaving-and-corsets familiarity of married life was not dreary vulgarity but a wholesome frankness; that artificial reticences might merely be irrita...

She tried to free herself from the speculation and disillusionment which had been twitching at her; sought to dismiss all the opinionation of an insurgent era. She wanted to shine upon the veal-faced ...

In courtship days Kennicott had shown her a photograph of Nels Erdstrom’s baby and log cabin, but she had never seen the Erdstroms. They had become merely “patients of the doctor.” Kennicott telephone...

They slept on a feather bed with their fur coats over them; in the morning they broke ice in the pitcher⁠—the vast flowered and gilt pitcher. Kennicott’s storm had not come. When they set out it was h...

Kennicott was heavily pleased by her Christmas presents, and he gave her a diamond bar-pin. But she could not persuade herself that he was much interested in the rites of the morning, in the tree she ...

Kennicott was heavily pleased by her Christmas presents, and he gave her a diamond bar-pin. But she could not persuade herself that he was much interested in the rites of the morning, in the tree she ...

Kennicott had five hobbies: medicine, land-investment, Carol, motoring, and hunting. It is not certain in what order he preferred them. Solid though his enthusiasms were in the matter of medicine⁠—his...

They had gone to the “movies.” The movies were almost as vital to Kennicott and the other solid citizens of Gopher Prairie as land-speculation and guns and automobiles. The feature film portrayed a br...

Her violin lay on top of the upright piano. She picked it up. Since she had last touched it the dried strings had snapped, and upon it lay a gold and crimson cigar-band....

She longed to see Guy Pollock, for the confirming of the brethren in the faith. But Kennicott’s dominance was heavy upon her. She could not determine whether she was checked by fear or him, or by iner...

Miles Bjornstam, the pariah “Red Swede,” had brought his circular saw and portable gasoline engine to the house, to cut the cords of poplar for the kitchen range. Kennicott had given the order; Carol ...

They were driving down the lake to the cottages that moonlit January night, twenty of them in the bobsled. They sang “Toy Land” and “Seeing Nelly Home”; they leaped from the low back of the sled to ra...

They were driving down the lake to the cottages that moonlit January night, twenty of them in the bobsled. They sang “Toy Land” and “Seeing Nelly Home”; they leaped from the low back of the sled to ra...

Though they had all been certain that they longed for the privilege of attending committee meetings and rehearsals, the dramatic association as definitely formed consisted only of Kennicott, Carol, Gu...

The Little Theaters, which were to give piquancy to American drama three or four years later, were only in embryo. But of this fast coming revolt Carol had premonitions. She knew from some lost magazi...

They had all the experiences of provincials in a metropolis. After breakfast Carol bustled to a hairdresser’s, bought gloves and a blouse, and importantly met Kennicott in front of an optician’s, in a...

They were in a long whitewashed hall with a clumsy draw-curtain across the front. The folding chairs were filled with people who looked washed and ironed: parents of the pupils, girl students, dutiful...

She hurried to the first meeting of the play-reading committee. Her jungle romance had faded, but she retained a religious fervor, a surge of half-formed thought about the creation of beauty by sugges...

She hurried to the first meeting of the play-reading committee. Her jungle romance had faded, but she retained a religious fervor, a surge of half-formed thought about the creation of beauty by sugges...

She disliked The Girl from Kankakee even more than she had expected. It narrated the success of a farm-lassie in clearing her brother of a charge of forgery. She became secretary to a New York million...

Carol did not resent their criticisms, she didn’t very much resent their sudden knowledge, so long as they let her make pictures. It was at rehearsals that the quarrels broke. No one understood that r...

Carol attended the only professional play which came to Gopher Prairie that spring. It was a “tent show, presenting snappy new dramas under canvas.” The hardworking actors doubled in brass, and took t...

It was the great night; it was the night of the play. The two dressing-rooms were swirling with actors, panting, twitchy pale. Del Snafflin the barber, who was as much a professional as Ella, having o...

Between the second and third acts she called the company together, and supplicated, “I want to know something, before we have a chance to separate. Whether we’re doing well or badly tonight, it is a b...

She felt old and detached through high-school commencement week, which is the fête of youth in Gopher Prairie; through baccalaureate sermon, senior Parade, junior entertainment, commencement address b...

In three years of exile from herself Carol had certain experiences chronicled as important by the Dauntless, or discussed by the Jolly Seventeen, but the event unchronicled, undiscussed, and supremely...

In three years of exile from herself Carol had certain experiences chronicled as important by the Dauntless, or discussed by the Jolly Seventeen, but the event unchronicled, undiscussed, and supremely...

Bea and Miles Bjornstam were married in June, a month after The Girl from Kankakee. Miles had turned respectable. He had renounced his criticisms of state and society; he had given up roving as horse-...

She was unexpectedly appointed to the town library-board by Ole Jenson, the new mayor. The other members were Dr. Westlake, Lyman Cass, Julius Flickerbaugh the attorney, Guy Pollock, and Martin Mahone...

Kennicott made an excellent land-deal, but as he told her none of the details, she was not greatly exalted or agitated. What did agitate her was his announcement, half whispered and half blurted, half...

Idling on the porch of their summer cottage at the lake, on afternoons when Kennicott was in town, when the water was glazed and the whole air languid, she pictured a hundred escapes: Fifth Avenue in ...

Trains! At the lake cottage she missed the passing of the trains. She realized that in town she had depended upon them for assurance that there remained a world beyond. The railroad was more than a me...

She turned to the Chautauqua as she had turned to the dramatic association, to the library-board. Besides the permanent Mother Chautauqua, in New York, there are, all over these States, commercial Cha...

Two weeks later the Great War smote Europe. For a month Gopher Prairie had the delight of shuddering, then, as the war settled down to a business of trench-fighting, they forgot. When Carol talked abo...

The baby was coming. Each morning she was nauseated, chilly, bedraggled, and certain that she would never again be attractive; each twilight she was afraid. She did not feel exalted, but unkempt and f...

The baby was coming. Each morning she was nauseated, chilly, bedraggled, and certain that she would never again be attractive; each twilight she was afraid. She did not feel exalted, but unkempt and f...

The people who hemmed her in had been brilliantly reinforced by Mr. and Mrs. Whittier N. Smail⁠—Kennicott’s Uncle Whittier and Aunt Bessie. The true Main Streetite defines a relative as a person to wh...

She was no longer irritated by the cooing of the matrons, nor by their opinion that diet didn’t matter so long as the Little Ones had plenty of lace and moist kisses, but she concluded that in the car...

Though the town seemed to Carol to change no more than the surrounding fields, there was a constant shifting, these three years. The citizen of the prairie drifts always westward. It may be because he...

Gray steel that seems unmoving because it spins so fast in the balanced flywheel, gray snow in an avenue of elms, gray dawn with the sun behind it⁠—this was the gray of Vida Sherwin’s life at thirty-s...

Gray steel that seems unmoving because it spins so fast in the balanced flywheel, gray snow in an avenue of elms, gray dawn with the sun behind it⁠—this was the gray of Vida Sherwin’s life at thirty-s...

Vida had enjoyed Raymie Wutherspoon’s singing in the Episcopal choir; she had thoroughly reviewed the weather with him at Methodist sociables and in the Bon Ton. But she did not really know him till s...

Ray habitually asked her about his window-trimming, the display of the new shoes, the best music for the entertainment at the Eastern Star, and (though he was recognized as a professional authority on...

Ray and she had stopped in at Dyer’s for a hot chocolate on their way home from the movies, that March evening. Vida speculated, “Do you know that I may not be here next year?” “What do you mean?” Wit...

They took the Ole Jenson house. “It’s small,” said Vida, “but it’s got the dearest vegetable garden, and I love having time to get near to Nature for once.” Though she became Vida Wutherspoon technica...

The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about t...

The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about t...

Carol drove through an astonishing number of books from the public library and from city shops. Kennicott was at first uncomfortable over her disconcerting habit of buying them. A book was a book, and...

In reading popular stories and seeing plays, asserted Carol, she had found only two traditions of the American small town. The first tradition, repeated in scores of magazines every month, is that the...

She had inquired as to the effect of this dominating dullness upon foreigners. She remembered the feeble exotic quality to be found in the first-generation Scandinavians; she recalled the Norwegian Fa...

Here Vida observed, “Yes⁠—well⁠—Do you know, I’ve always thought that Ray would have made a wonderful rector. He has what I call an essentially religious soul. My! He’d have read the service beautiful...

Doubtless all small towns, in all countries, in all ages, Carol admitted, have a tendency to be not only dull but mean, bitter, infested with curiosity. In France or Tibet quite as much as in Wyoming ...

She had sought to be definite in analyzing the surface ugliness of the Gopher Prairies. She asserted that it is a matter of universal similarity; of flimsiness of construction, so that the towns resem...

Vida was indignant; Carol was apologetic; they talked for another hour, the eternal Mary and Martha⁠—an immoralist Mary and a reformist Martha. It was Vida who conquered. The fact that she had been le...

When America entered the Great European War, Vida sent Raymie off to an officers’ training-camp⁠—less than a year after her wedding. Raymie was diligent and rather strong. He came out a first lieutena...

When America entered the Great European War, Vida sent Raymie off to an officers’ training-camp⁠—less than a year after her wedding. Raymie was diligent and rather strong. He came out a first lieutena...

Everywhere Carol heard that the war was going to bring a basic change in psychology, to purify and uplift everything from marital relations to national politics, and she tried to exult in it. Only she...

It was in June, two months after America’s entrance into the war, that the momentous event happened⁠—the visit of the great Percy Bresnahan, the millionaire president of the Velvet Motor Car Company o...

The Kennicotts, the Elders, the Clarks, and Bresnahan went fishing at Red Squaw Lake. They drove forty miles to the lake in Elder’s new Cadillac. There was much laughter and bustle at the start, much ...

Bresnahan had borrowed Jackson Elder’s motor; he stopped at the Kennicotts’; he bawled at Carol, rocking with Hugh on the porch, “Better come for a ride.” She wanted to snub him. “Thanks so much, but ...

All that midsummer month Carol was sensitive to Kennicott. She recalled a hundred grotesqueries: her comic dismay at his having chewed tobacco, the evening when she had tried to read poetry to him; ma...

All that midsummer month Carol was sensitive to Kennicott. She recalled a hundred grotesqueries: her comic dismay at his having chewed tobacco, the evening when she had tried to read poetry to him; ma...

She was ignored by the males till midnight. Her husband called, “Suppose we could have some eats, Carrie?” As she passed through the dining-room the men smiled on her, belly-smiles. None of them notic...

It clarified in her the longing for a place of her own. “While it’s so hot, I think I’ll sleep in the spare room,” she said next day. “Not a bad idea.” He was cheerful and kindly. The room was filled ...

The tragicomedy of the “domestic situation.” Oscarina went back home to help on the farm, and Carol had a succession of maids, with gaps between. The lack of servants was becoming one of the most cram...

Every year since their marriage Carol had longed for a trip through the East. Every year Kennicott had talked of attending the American Medical Association convention, “and then afterwards we could do...

“Carrie’s all right. She’s finicky, but she’ll get over it. But I wish she’d hurry up about it! What she can’t understand is that a fellow practising medicine in a small town like this has got to cut ...

“Carrie’s all right. She’s finicky, but she’ll get over it. But I wish she’d hurry up about it! What she can’t understand is that a fellow practising medicine in a small town like this has got to cut ...

Mrs. Bogart was calling upon Carol, protected by Aunt Bessie Smail. “Have you heard about this awful woman that’s supposed to have come here to do dressmaking⁠—a Mrs. Swiftwaite⁠—awful peroxide blonde...

Carol’s liveliest interest was in her walks with the baby. Hugh wanted to know what the box-elder tree said, and what the Ford garage said, and what the big cloud said, and she told him, with a feelin...

Carol’s liveliest interest was in her walks with the baby. Hugh wanted to know what the box-elder tree said, and what the Ford garage said, and what the big cloud said, and she told him, with a feelin...

While he had worked on the addition Miles had talked frankly to Carol. He admitted now that so long as he stayed in Gopher Prairie he would remain a pariah. Bea’s Lutheran friends were as much offende...

A letter from Raymie Wutherspoon, in France, said that he had been sent to the front, been slightly wounded, been made a captain. From Vida’s pride Carol sought to draw a stimulant to rouse her from d...

A letter from Raymie Wutherspoon, in France, said that he had been sent to the front, been slightly wounded, been made a captain. From Vida’s pride Carol sought to draw a stimulant to rouse her from d...

She found no inspiration but she did find a dependable kindness in Mrs. Westlake, and at last she yielded to the old woman’s receptivity and had relief in sobbing the story of Bea. Guy Pollock she oft...

It was at a supper of the Jolly Seventeen in August that Carol heard of “Elizabeth,” from Mrs. Dave Dyer. Carol was fond of Maud Dyer, because she had been particularly agreeable lately; had obviously...

It was at a supper of the Jolly Seventeen in August that Carol heard of “Elizabeth,” from Mrs. Dave Dyer. Carol was fond of Maud Dyer, because she had been particularly agreeable lately; had obviously...

She was at Sunday morning service at the Baptist Church, in a solemn row with her husband, Hugh, Uncle Whittier, Aunt Bessie. Despite Aunt Bessie’s nagging the Kennicotts rarely attended church. The d...

They had Sunday dinner with the Smails, in a dining-room which centered about a fruit and flower piece and a crayon-enlargement of Uncle Whittier. Carol did not heed Aunt Bessie’s fussing in regard to...

She went calling. Boarding with the Widow Bogart was Fern Mullins, a girl of twenty-two who was to be teacher of English, French, and gymnastics in the high school this coming session. Fern Mullins ha...

She often passed Erik Valborg on the street; the brown jersey coat became unremarkable. When she was driving with Kennicott, in early evening, she saw him on the lake shore, reading a thin book which ...

“He has absolutely no sense of humor. Less than Will. But hasn’t he⁠—What is a ‘sense of humor’? Isn’t the thing he lacks the back-slapping jocosity that passes for humor here? Anyway⁠—Poor lamb, coax...

Kennicott was cordial to Fern Mullins, teased her, told her he was a “great hand for running off with pretty schoolteachers,” and promised that if the school-board should object to her dancing, he wou...

She had walked up the railroad track with Hugh, this Sunday afternoon. She saw Erik Valborg coming, in an ancient highwater suit, tramping sullenly and alone, striking at the rails with a stick. For a...

She had walked up the railroad track with Hugh, this Sunday afternoon. She saw Erik Valborg coming, in an ancient highwater suit, tramping sullenly and alone, striking at the rails with a stick. For a...

The need of explaining Erik dragged her back into doubting. For all his ardent reading, and his ardent life, was he anything but a small-town youth bred on an illiberal farm and in cheap tailor shops?...

She wasn’t altogether pleased, the week after, when Erik was independent and, without asking for her inspiration, planned the tennis tournament. It proved that he had learned to play in Minneapolis; t...

She wanted to see Erik. She wanted someone to play with! There wasn’t even so dignified and sound an excuse as having Kennicott’s trousers pressed; when she inspected them, all three pairs looked disc...

She wondered why she sang so often, and why she found so many pleasant things⁠—lamplight seen though trees on a cool evening, sunshine on brown wood, morning sparrows, black sloping roofs turned to pl...

She needed new clothes. Kennicott had promised, “We’ll have a good trip down to the Cities in the fall, and take plenty of time for it, and you can get your new glad-rags then.” But as she examined he...

Fern Mullins rushed into the house on a Saturday morning early in September and shrieked at Carol, “School starts next Tuesday. I’ve got to have one more spree before I’m arrested. Let’s get up a picn...

Fern Mullins rushed into the house on a Saturday morning early in September and shrieked at Carol, “School starts next Tuesday. I’ve got to have one more spree before I’m arrested. Let’s get up a picn...

Mrs. Bogart called next day. She had a hen-like, crumb-pecking, diligent appearance. Her smile was too innocent. The pecking started instantly: “Cy says you had lots of fun at the picnic yesterday. Di...

She awoke at ebb-time, at three of the morning, woke sharply and fully; and sharply and coldly as her father pronouncing sentence on a cruel swindler she gave judgment: “A pitiful and tawdry love-affa...

Few of the aristocrats of the Jolly Seventeen attended the humble folk-meets of the Baptist and Methodist church suppers, where the Willis Woodfords, the Dillons, the Champ Perrys, Oleson the butcher,...

Their night came unheralded. Kennicott was on a country call. It was cool but Carol huddled on the porch, rocking, meditating, rocking. The house was lonely and repellent, and though she sighed, “I ou...

Their night came unheralded. Kennicott was on a country call. It was cool but Carol huddled on the porch, rocking, meditating, rocking. The house was lonely and repellent, and though she sighed, “I ou...

Kennicott had seemed nervous and absentminded through that supper-hour, two evenings after. He prowled about the living-room, then growled: “What the dickens have you been saying to Ma Westlake?” Caro...

Vida had done her a service; had made all agonizing seem so fatuous that she ceased writhing and saw that her whole problem was simple as mutton: she was interested in Erik’s aspiration; interest gave...

She lay sleepless. She alternately considered ways of leaving Kennicott, and remembered his virtues, pitied his bewilderment in face of the subtle corroding sicknesses which he could not dose nor cut ...

She did not see Erik for a fortnight, save once at church and once when she went to the tailor shop to talk over the plans, contingencies, and strategy of Kennicott’s annual campaign for getting a new...

Carol was on the back porch, tightening a bolt on the baby’s go-cart, this Sunday afternoon. Through an open window of the Bogart house she heard a screeching, heard Mrs. Bogart’s haggish voice: “… di...

Carol was on the back porch, tightening a bolt on the baby’s go-cart, this Sunday afternoon. Through an open window of the Bogart house she heard a screeching, heard Mrs. Bogart’s haggish voice: “… di...

Kennicott was less shocked and much less frightened than Carol, and more articulate in his description of Mrs. Bogart, when she had gone. Maud Dyer telephoned to Carol and, after a rather improbable q...

Before supper she found, by half a dozen telephone calls, that Fern had fled to the Minniemashie House. She hastened there, trying not to be self-conscious about the people who looked at her on the st...

Sam Clark was president of the school-board. When Carol told him Fern’s story Sam looked sympathetic and neighborly, and Mrs. Clark sat by cooing, “Oh, isn’t that too bad.” Carol was interrupted only ...

For a month which was one suspended moment of doubt she saw Erik only casually, at an Eastern Star dance, at the shop, where, in the presence of Nat Hicks, they conferred with immense particularity on...

For a month which was one suspended moment of doubt she saw Erik only casually, at an Eastern Star dance, at the shop, where, in the presence of Nat Hicks, they conferred with immense particularity on...

He was cheery and more casual than ever at breakfast. All day she tried to devise a way of giving Erik up. Telephone? The village central would unquestionably “listen in.” A letter? It might be found....

A week after Erik’s going the maid startled her by announcing, “There’s a Mr. Valborg downstairs say he vant to see you.” She was conscious of the maid’s interested stare, angry at this shattering of ...

People covertly stared at her on the street. Aunt Bessie tried to catechize her about Erik’s disappearance, and it was Kennicott who silenced the woman with a savage, “Say, are you hinting that Carrie...

She left Hugh with Aunt Bessie. But for Kennicott she would have taken him. She hoped that in some miraculous way yet unrevealed she might find it possible to remain in California. She did not want to...

Dusk on a snowy December afternoon. The sleeper which would connect at Kansas City with the California train rolled out of St. Paul with a chick‑a‑chick, chick‑a‑chick, chick‑a‑chick as it crossed the...

They journeyed for three and a half months. They saw the Grand Canyon, the adobe walls of Sante Fe and, in a drive from El Paso into Mexico, their first foreign land. They jogged from San Diego and La...

They journeyed for three and a half months. They saw the Grand Canyon, the adobe walls of Sante Fe and, in a drive from El Paso into Mexico, their first foreign land. They jogged from San Diego and La...

No one knew that they were coming; no one met them; and because of the icy roads, the only conveyance at the station was the hotel bus, which they missed while Kennicott was giving his trunk-check to ...

She tried to be content, which was a contradiction in terms. She fanatically cleaned house all April. She knitted a sweater for Hugh. She was diligent at Red Cross work. She was silent when Vida raved...

She tried to be content, which was a contradiction in terms. She fanatically cleaned house all April. She knitted a sweater for Hugh. She was diligent at Red Cross work. She was silent when Vida raved...

She had vicarious happiness in the return of Major Raymond Wutherspoon. He was well, but still weak from having been gassed; he had been discharged and he came home as the first of the war veterans. I...

The town was booming, as a result of the war price of wheat. The wheat money did not remain in the pockets of the farmers; the towns existed to take care of all that. Iowa farmers were selling their l...

Kennicott was not so inhumanly patient that he could continue to forgive Carol’s heresies, to woo her as he had on the venture to California. She tried to be inconspicuous, but she was betrayed by her...

Kennicott was not so inhumanly patient that he could continue to forgive Carol’s heresies, to woo her as he had on the venture to California. She tried to be inconspicuous, but she was betrayed by her...

For a month they discussed it. They hurt each other very much, and sometimes they were close to weeping, and invariably he used banal phrases about her duties and she used phrases quite as banal about...

The last thing she saw on the station platform was Kennicott, faithfully waving his hand, his face so full of uncomprehending loneliness that he could not smile but only twitch up his lips. She waved ...

The theory of the Dauntless regarding Carol’s absence: Mrs. Will Kennicott and son Hugh left on No. 24 on Saturday last for a stay of some months in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Washington. Mrs....

She found employment in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. Though the armistice with Germany was signed a few weeks after her coming to Washington, the work of the bureau continued. She filed correspon...

She found employment in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. Though the armistice with Germany was signed a few weeks after her coming to Washington, the work of the bureau continued. She filed correspon...

Washington gave her all the graciousness in which she had had faith: white columns seen across leafy parks, spacious avenues, twisty alleys. Daily she passed a dark square house with a hint of magnoli...

Her first acquaintances were the members of the Tincomb Methodist Church, a vast redbrick tabernacle. Vida Sherwin had given her a letter to an earnest woman with eyeglasses, plaid silk waist, and a b...

She was encouraged to believe that she had not been abnormal in viewing Gopher Prairie as unduly tedious and slatternly. She found the same faith not only in girls escaped from domesticity but also in...

The chart which plots Carol’s progress is not easy to read. The lines are broken and uncertain of direction; often instead of rising they sink in wavering scrawls; and the colors are watery blue and p...

She had lived in Washington for a year. She was tired of the office. It was tolerable, far more tolerable than housework, but it was not adventurous. She was having tea and cinnamon toast, alone at a ...

She had lived in Washington for a year. She was tired of the office. It was tolerable, far more tolerable than housework, but it was not adventurous. She was having tea and cinnamon toast, alone at a ...

She was on the Powhatan roof with the captain. At a table, somewhat vociferously buying improbable “soft drinks” for two fluffy girls, was a man with a large familiar back. “Oh! I think I know him,” s...

She was at a motion-picture show. The film was a highly advertised and abysmal thing smacking of simpering hairdressers, cheap perfume, red-plush suites on the back streets of tenderloins, and complac...

Kennicott first came to see her in November, thirteen months after her arrival in Washington. When he announced that he was coming she was not at all sure that she wished to see him. She was glad that...

He was thrilled by old negro coachmen, admirals, aeroplanes, the building to which his income tax would eventually go, a Rolls-Royce, Lynnhaven oysters, the Supreme Court Room, a New York theatrical m...

They were at dinner. He hinted, “Before you showed me those places today, I’d already made up my mind that when I built the new house we used to talk about, I’d fix it the way you wanted it. I’m prett...

It was in the Villa Margherita, by the palms of the Charleston Battery and the metallic harbor, that her aloofness melted. When they sat on the upper balcony, enchanted by the moon glitter, she cried,...

She was in Washington; Kennicott was in Gopher Prairie, writing as dryly as ever about water-pipes and goose-hunting and Mrs. Fageros’s mastoid. She was talking at dinner to a generalissima of suffrag...

Her active hatred of Gopher Prairie had run out. She saw it now as a toiling new settlement. With sympathy she remembered Kennicott’s defense of its citizens as “a lot of pretty good folks, working ha...

She wondered all the way home what her sensations would be. She wondered about it so much that she had every sensation she had imagined. She was excited by each familiar porch, each hearty “Well, well...

She wondered all the way home what her sensations would be. She wondered about it so much that she had every sensation she had imagined. She was excited by each familiar porch, each hearty “Well, well...

She had left a city which sat up nights to talk of universal transition; of European revolution, guild socialism, free verse. She had fancied that all the world was changing. She found that it was not...

Dr. Westlake, Sam Clark, Nat Hicks, and Del Snafflin were talking in Del’s barber shop. “Well, I see Kennicott’s wife is taking a whirl at the restroom, now,” said Dr. Westlake. He emphasized the “now...

For some reason which was totally mysterious to Carol, Maud Dyer seemed to resent her return. At the Jolly Seventeen Maud giggled nervously, “Well, I suppose you found war-work a good excuse to stay a...

Her baby, born in August, was a girl. Carol could not decide whether she was to become a feminist leader or marry a scientist or both, but did settle on Vassar and a tricolette suit with a small black...

Hugh was loquacious at breakfast. He desired to give his impressions of owls and F Street. “Don’t make so much noise. You talk too much,” growled Kennicott. Carol flared. “Don’t speak to him that way!...

The Kennicotts and the Sam Clarks had driven north to a duck-pass between two lakes, on an autumn day of blue and copper. Kennicott had given her a light twenty-gauge shotgun. She had a first lesson i...

“They’re too much for me,” Carol sighed to Kennicott. “I’ve been thinking about getting up an annual Community Day, when the whole town would forget feuds and go out and have sports and a picnic and a...