Something Old, Something New

Here, then, is a symbolism equal to all the great constructions to be found on this farm. Great barns and powerful machines and well engineered roads were all a part of our past, and ought to be seen and touched by my children, and their children, and thoughtfully measured from top to bottom...but we must measure the small parts too, for these tell us much about who we were, and who we are.

There is a sense of triumph here. Grasshoppers may have devoured the threads of the curtains Clara placed in the windows of that first small home, but they cannot devour the idea of transformation - in which a wilderness is transformed by something we so feebly have named home, and where a simple structure is transformed by the small particulars which render it beautiful. They cannot devour hope, and they cannot devour love; they cannot devour the spirit in a man who believes he can improve his world by means of intelligence and strength and hard work. Their notions of order and propriety and decency survived the grasshoppers and the blizzards, ill health and hunger, economic hardships and climactic extremes...the books and curtains being the outward manifestations of something very large, and very strong, in these Scandinavian hearts.