{"product_id":"2940013740990","title":"Barren Ground","description":"A girl in an orange-coloured shawl stood at the window of Pedlar's store\u003cbr\u003eand looked, through the falling snow, at the deserted road. Though she\u003cbr\u003ewatched there without moving, her attitude, in its stillness, gave an\u003cbr\u003eimpression of arrested flight, as if she were running toward life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBare, starved, desolate, the country closed in about her. The last train\u003cbr\u003eof the day had gone by without stopping, and the station of Pedlar's Mill\u003cbr\u003ewas as lonely as the abandoned fields by the track. From the bleak\u003cbr\u003ehorizon, where the flatness created an illusion of immensity, the\u003cbr\u003ebroomsedge was spreading in a smothered fire over the melancholy brown of\u003cbr\u003ethe landscape. Under the falling snow, which melted as soon as it touched\u003cbr\u003ethe earth, the colour was veiled and dim; but when the sky changed the\u003cbr\u003ebroomsedge changed with it. On clear mornings the waste places were\u003cbr\u003ecinnamon-red in the sunshine. Beneath scudding clouds the plumes of the\u003cbr\u003ebent grasses faded to ivory. During the long spring rains, a film of\u003cbr\u003eyellow-green stole over the burned ground. At autumn sunsets, when the\u003cbr\u003ered light searched the country, the broomsedge caught fire from the\u003cbr\u003eafterglow and blazed out in a splendour of colour. Then the meeting of\u003cbr\u003eearth and sky dissolved in the flaming mist of the horizon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt these quiet seasons, the dwellers near Pedlar's Mill felt scarcely\u003cbr\u003emore than a tremor on the surface of life. But on stormy days, when the\u003cbr\u003ewind plunged like a hawk from the swollen clouds, there was a quivering\u003cbr\u003ein the broomsedge, as if coveys of frightened partridges were flying from\u003cbr\u003ethe pursuer. Then the quivering would become a ripple and the ripple\u003cbr\u003ewould swell presently into rolling waves. The straw would darken as the\u003cbr\u003egust swooped down, and brighten as it sped on to the shelter of scrub\u003cbr\u003epine and sassafras. And while the wind bewitched the solitude, a vague\u003cbr\u003erestlessness would stir in the hearts of living things on the farms, of\u003cbr\u003emen, women, and animals. \"Broomsage ain't jest wild stuff. It's a kind of\u003cbr\u003efate,\" old Matthew Fairlamb used to say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThirty years ago, modern methods of farming, even methods that were\u003cbr\u003emodern in the benighted eighteen-nineties, had not penetrated to this\u003cbr\u003ethinly settled part of Virginia. The soil, impoverished by the war and\u003cbr\u003ethe tenant system which followed the war, was still drained of fertility\u003cbr\u003efor the sake of the poor crops it could yield. Spring after spring, the\u003cbr\u003ecultivated ground appeared to shrink into the \"old fields,\" where scrub\u003cbr\u003epine or oak succeeded broomsedge and sassafras as inevitably as autumn\u003cbr\u003eslipped into winter. Now and then a new start would be made. Some thrifty\u003cbr\u003esettler, a German Catholic, perhaps, who was trying his fortunes in a\u003cbr\u003estaunch Protestant community, would buy a mortgaged farm for a dollar an\u003cbr\u003eacre, and begin to experiment with suspicious, strange-smelling\u003cbr\u003efertilizers. For a season or two his patch of ground would respond to the\u003cbr\u003eunusual treatment and grow green with promise. Then the forlorn roads,\u003cbr\u003edeep in mud, and the surrounding air of failure, which was as inescapable\u003cbr\u003eas a drought, combined with the cutworm, the locust, and the tobacco-fly,\u003cbr\u003eagainst the human invader; and where the brief haryest had been, the\u003cbr\u003eperpetual broomsedge would wave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe tenant farmers, who had flocked after the ruin of war as buzzards\u003cbr\u003eafter a carcass, had immediately picked the featureless landscape as\u003cbr\u003eclean as a skeleton. When the swarming was over only three of the larger\u003cbr\u003efarms at Pedlar's Mill remained undivided in the hands of their original\u003cbr\u003eowners. Though Queen Elizabeth County had never been one of the\u003cbr\u003earistocratic regions of Virginia, it was settled by sturdy English\u003cbr\u003eyeomen, with a thin but lively sprinkling of the persecuted Protestants\u003cbr\u003eof other nations. Several of these superior pioneers brought blue blood\u003cbr\u003ein their veins, as well as the vigorous fear of God in their hearts; but\u003cbr\u003ethe great number arrived, as they remained, \"good people,\" a\u003cbr\u003ecomprehensive term, which implies, to Virginians, the exact opposite of\u003cbr\u003ethe phrase, \"a good family.\" The good families of the state have\u003cbr\u003epreserved, among other things, custom, history, tradition, romantic\u003cbr\u003efiction, and the Episcopal Church. The good people, according to the\u003cbr\u003erecords of clergymen, which are the only surviving records, have\u003cbr\u003epreserved nothing except themselves. Ignored alike by history and\u003cbr\u003efiction, they have their inconspicuous place in the social strata midway\u003cbr\u003ebetween the lower gentility and the upper class of \"poor white,\" a\u003cbr\u003eposition which encourages the useful rather than the ornamental public\u003cbr\u003evirtues.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070246076656,"sku":"2940013740990","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013740990_p0.jpg?v=1763589620","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013740990","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}