Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1922-05-03

| suns genius, Say he is unnecessarily
Tisque. Others, not atfr0nted by
realism, declare that Hamsun has tolu
a story as he saw life among the
| pioneers of the Norwegian mountains
he is depicting. He neither CLOSES
nor condOnes. In any event the story
is one Of great power and with pass
ages of surprising beauty. We OFFER
two of these as almost uneXampled
in defining the true purpose OF ayr
culture and the simple dignity and
nobility of Man close TO Nature
For generations back, into forgot
ten time, his fathers before him had
soWed corn; sOlemnly, on a still,
calm evening, best with a gentle fall
of warm and misty rain soon after
the grey goose fight. Potatoes were
new thing, nothing mystic, nothing
religious; women and children could
plant them-earth- apples that came
from foreign parts like coffee; fine,
rich foods 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 resig-
nation. Look. the tiny grains that
are to take life and grow, shoot up
| into ears, and give more corn again;
so it is throughout all earth where
corn is sown. Palestine, America,
the valleys of Norway itself-a great
wide world, and here is Isak, tiny
| speck in the midst of it all, sower.
Little showers of corn flung out fam
wise from his hand; a kindly clouded
sky, with the promise of the faint
est misty rain.
Isak at his sowing; stump of a
man, barge of man to look at,
nothing more. Clad in homespun-
wool from his own sheep, boots from
the hide of his own COWS and calves.
! Sowing-and he walks religiously
bareheaded to that work; his head is
bald just at the very top, but all the
rest of him shamefully hairy; fan,
a wheel of hair and beard, stands of
from his face. 'Tis Isak, the Mar
grave.
Twas rarely he knew the day of
the month-what need had he Of
that? He had no bills to be met on
a certain date; the marks on his al
manac were to show the time when
each of the COWS should bear But
he knew st. Olafs Day in the autumn,
that by then his hay must be in, ana
he knew Candlemas in spring, and
that three weeks after that the bears
came out of their winter quarters;
all seed must be in the earth by then.
He knew what was needful.
A of
soul: a worker on the land without
respite A ghost risen out of the past
to point the future, man from the
earliest days of cultivation, settler
in the wilds, nine hundred years old,
and withal, a man Of the day.
Nay, there was nothing left to him
now of the copper mine and its
riches-the money had vanished into
air. And who had anything left OF
all that wealth when the workings
stopped, and the hills lay dead and
deserted? But the Almenning was
there still, and then new holdings on
that land, beckOning hundred more.
Nothing growing there? All things
! growing there; men and beasts ana
fruit of the soil. Isak sowing his
corn The evening sunlight falls on
the corn that flashes out In an arc
from his hand, and falls like a drop
ping of gold to the ground. Here
comes Sivert to the narrowing; after
that the roller, and then the harrow
again. Forest and field look on. All
is majesty and power-a sequence
and purpose of things
King : cling say the COW
bells far up on the hillside, coming
nearer and nearer; the cattle are
coming home for the night. Fifteen
head of them, and fve-and-forty
sheep and goats besides; threescore
in all. There go the women out with
their milk-pails, carried on yokeS
| from the shoulder; Leopoldine, Jen-
sine. and little Rebecca. All three
barefooted. The Margarine, niger
herself, is not with them; she is in
door preparing the meal. Tall ana
stately as she moves about her mouse,
a Vestal tending the fire Of kitchen
stove. Inger has made her stormy
voyage tbs true, has lived in city
while, but now she is home; the
world is wide, swarming with tiny
specks-Inger has been one OF them.
All but nothing in humanity, only one
speck.
Then comes the evening.
Inc Cr1UlC, w. w. NOIoCCA, say
with Growth of the Soil, Ham
sun achieves his greatest triumph.
Setting aside all that mattered most
to himself, he turns, with the expert
ence of a lifetime rich in conflict, to
the things that matter to us all. De-
liberately shorn of all that makes for
mere effect, Isak stands out as an
elemental figure, the symbol OF Man
~ b;c hac+ face to face with Nature
and life. There is no greater human
haracter-reverently said-in the
Bible itself.
"These then are the steps of Ham
suns progress as an author, from the
passionate chaos of Suit to the Mil
tonic. monumental calm of Growth OF
the Soil. The stages in themselves
are full of beauty. They follow as the
seasons do. each with charm OF us
own, yet all deriving from one source
| .rT,l.o 1,o1oIaccnpcc Of his own Ullr-