A long and rather broad valley, with stretches of green and yellow
grain fields, with mowed clover meadows, potato patches in flower,
and little fields of flax with their tiny blue flowers, above which
fluttered great swarms of white butterflies--this was the setting.
At the very heart of the valley, as if to complete the picture, lay
a big old-fashioned farmstead, with many gray outhouses and a large
red dwelling-house. At the gables stood two tall, spreading pear
trees; at the gate were a couple of young birches; in the
grass-covered yard were great piles of firewood; and behind the
barn were several huge haystacks. The farmhouse rising above the
low fields was as pretty a sight as a ship, with masts and sails,
towering above the broad surface of the sea.

The man at the plow was thinking: "What a farm you've got! Many
well-timbered houses, fine cattle and horses, and servants who are
as good as gold. At least you are as well-to-do as any one in these
parts, so you'll never have to face poverty.

"But it's not poverty that I fear," he said, as if in answer to his
own thought. "I should be satisfied were I only as good a man as my
father or my father's father. What could have put such silly
nonsense into your head?" he wondered. "And a moment ago you were
feeling so happy. Ponder well this one thing: in father's time all
the neighbours were guided by him in all their undertakings. The
morning he began haymaking they did likewise and the day we started
in to plow our fallow field at the Ingmar Farm, plows were put in
the earth the length and breadth of the valley. Yet here I've been
plowing now for two hours and more without any one having so much
as ground a plowshare.