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THE AMERI CAN-SCAN DIN AVIAN REVIEW 
accept it. Then, too, these last few years had been crowded with war 
and things, and that had helped take his mind off it. 
“You have money enough to cross the ocean a thousand times 
first class and yet you cannot go home to see your mother in the 
spring!” He sighed and picked up a clod of the new-turned earth and 
crumbled it in his hands. It was rich and fat and fertile. He had made 
it so. It was his masterpiece. 
“If it was not for this I would have seen my mother long ago, 
when we were both young!” 
He remembered how in the early days he was always on the point 
of returning for a visit. How gleefully he used to plan! What a 
dramatic home-coming that first one was to have been!—after the land 
was “proved up” and the first papers taken out. He was going to come 
home in fine American clothes and strew money along the streets of 
Liljeby and kiss all the girls and talk big. Then he met Mary, his 
Yankee wife. It was a peculiar romance. He forgot all about his 
dramatic home-coming in the stress of courtship. They had met at the 
Fourth of July picnic in 1881. He first saw her in a noisy group of 
young people dancing “So Weave We the Broadcloth.” He marked 
how light she was on her feet and how beautifully she sang the accom¬ 
panying melody of the folk-dance. She must be a newcomer, he 
thought. After the dancing, when everybody was eating cold pork 
sandwiches and drinking lemonade, he approached her and asked, 
“How long have you been in this country? From which province do 
you come?” She only stared and blushed and turned, helpless and gig¬ 
gling, to the others. How they laughed at him! For beyond a folk-song 
or two and such stock phrases as “Good day” and “Hold your chaps,” 
Mary Kimball knew not a word of Swedish! Well, she became a good 
wife. She made heavenly coffee-cake and kringles and she sang her 
babies to sleep with “Row, row to the fishing grounds.” So the visit 
home was put off, and put off, until finally it was entirely out of the 
question. In the days that followed Karl-August Akerbrand was 
busy building the empire; Grover Cleveland . . . The McKinley 
tariff . . . The Grange . . . The Panic of ’98 . . . Free Silver 
. . . Sixteen-to-One . . . “You shall not crucify mankind upon a 
cross of gold.” . . . Remember the Maine! . . . More acres, larger 
herds, bigger crops, better roads. Before he knew it he was rich and 
“an early settler.” The children had now all flown the nest; Abraham 
Lincoln had a parish down in Nebraska, Selma had married and lived 
in the next county, Karin taught school, and Ingeborg was training 
to be a nurse. 
“And so it goes,” philosophized Karl-August. “Yes, now, if 
ever, would be the time to go, I suppose. But—” he shook his head 
sadly. 
It was warm and earthy and comfortable there in the sun. He 
