On certain days nothing could cheer me. When the bitter wind blew from the north, and the sky was filled with wild geese racing southward with swiftly-hurrying clouds, winter seemed about to spring upon me. The horses' tails streamed in the wind. Flurries of snow covered me with clinging flakes, and the mud "gummed" my boots and trouser legs, clogging my steps. At such times I suffered from cold and loneliness--all sense of being a man evaporated. I was just a little boy, longing for the leisure of boyhood.
Day after day, through the month of October and deep into November, I followed that team, turning over two acres of stubble each day. I would not believe this without proof, but it is true! At last it grew so cold that in the early morning everything was white with frost, and I was obliged to put one hand in my pocket to keep it warm, while holding the plow with the other; but I didn't mind this so much, for it hinted at the close of autumn. I've no doubt facing the wind in this way was excellent discipline, but I didn't think it necessary then, and my heart was sometimes bitter and rebellious.
My father did not intend to be severe. As he had always been an early riser and a busy toiler, it seemed perfectly natural and good discipline that his sons should also plow and husk corn at ten years of age. He often told of beginning life as a "bound boy" at nine, and these stories helped me to perform my own tasks without whining.
At last there came a morning when by striking my heel upon the ground I convinced my boss that the soil was frozen. "All right," he said; "you may lay off this forenoon."
Biography. Hamlin Garland (1860-1940) was born in Wisconsin. His father was a farmer-pioneer, who was always eager to be on the border line of the farming country; consequently, he moved from Wisconsin to Minnesota, from Minnesota to Iowa, and from Iowa to Dakota. The hope of cheaper land, better soil, and bigger crops led him on. When Hamlin Garland turned his attention to literature, he decided to write truthfully of the western farmer's life and its great hardships in pioneer days, as well as its hopes and joys. In A Son of the Middle Border, an autobiography, from which "My Boyhood on the Prairie" is taken, he has given a most interesting record of experiences in the development of the Middle West. Mitchell County, where this scene is laid, is in Iowa.