that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun
and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be
dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it
comes as naturally as sleep.



III

ON SUNDAY MORNING Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the acquaintance
of our new Bohemian neighbours. We were taking them some provisions, as
they had come to live on a wild place where there was no garden or
chicken-house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up a sack of
potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and grandmother packed
some loaves of Saturday's bread, a jar of butter, and several pumpkin pies
in the straw of the wagon-box. We clambered up to the front seat and
jolted off past the little pond and along the road that climbed to the big
cornfield.

I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but there was
only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the high wagon-seat
one could look off a long way. The road ran about like a wild thing,
avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide and shallow.
And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the sunflowers grew; some of
them were as big as little trees, with great rough leaves and many branches
which bore dozens of blossoms. They made a gold ribbon across the prairie.
Occasionally one of the horses would tear off with his teeth a plant full
of blossoms, and walk along munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his
bites as he ate down toward them.