"Шервуд Андерсен. Белый бедняк (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

farm but the New Englanders were accustomed to difficulties and were not
discouraged. The land was deep and rich and the people who had settled upon
it were poor but hopeful. They felt that every day of hard work done in
clearing the land was like laying up treasure against the future. In New
England they had fought against a hard climate and had managed to find a
living on stony unproductive soil. The milder climate and the rich deep
soil of Michigan was, they felt, full of promise. Sarah's father like most
of his neighbors had gone into debt for his land and for tools with which
to clear and work it and every year spent most of his earnings in paying
interest on a mortgage held by a banker in a nearby town, but that did not
discourage him. He whistled as he went about his work and spoke often of a
future of ease and plenty. "In a few years and when the land is cleared
we'll make money hand over fist," he declared.

When Sarah grew into young womanhood and went about among the young people
in the new country, she heard much talk of mortgages and of the difficulty
of making ends meet, but every one spoke of the hard conditions as
temporary. In every mind the future was bright with promise. Throughout
the whole Mid-American country, in Ohio, Northern Indiana and Illinois,
Wisconsin and Iowa a hopeful spirit prevailed. In every breast hope fought
a successful war with poverty and discouragement. Optimism got into the
blood of the children and later led to the same kind of hopeful courageous
development of the whole western country. The sons and daughters of these
hardy people no doubt had their minds too steadily fixed on the problem
of the paying off of mortgages and getting on in the world, but there was
courage in them. If they, with the frugal and sometimes niggardly New
Englanders from whom they were sprung, have given modern American life a
too material flavor, they have at least created a land in which a less
determinedly materialistic people may in their turn live in comfort.

In the midst of the little hopeless community of beaten men and yellow
defeated women on the bank of the Mississippi River, the woman who had
become Hugh McVey's second mother and in whose veins flowed the blood of
the pioneers, felt herself undefeated and unbeatable. She and her husband
would, she felt, stay in the Missouri town for a while and then move on
to a larger town and a better position in life. They would move on and up
until the little fat man was a railroad president or a millionaire. It was
the way things were done. She had no doubt of the future. "Do everything
well," she said to her husband, who was perfectly satisfied with his
position in life and had no exalted notions as to his future. "Remember to
make your reports out neatly and clearly. Show them you can do perfectly
the task given you to do, and you will be given a chance at a larger task.
Some day when you least expect it something will happen. You will be called
up into a position of power. We won't be compelled to stay in this hole of
a place very long."

The ambitious energetic little woman, who had taken the son of the indolent
farm hand to her heart, constantly talked to him of her own people. Every
afternoon when her housework was done she took the boy into the front room
of the house and spent hours laboring with him over his lessons. She worked