Excerpt from Old Wives for New: A Novel August shone hot and clear upon the hills of southern Indiana. The grain had been cut, and quail were gleaning in the stubble, with a pause now and then to whistle from the gray zigzag fence. But the timothy was still standing, waist deep; the full-blown blossoms of clover, white and pink, were scenting the air; and down where the now shallow creek bustled along, over and among the stones of its rocky bed, the cornstalks were rustling like so many ladies in stiff green Sunday silk. There was a path through the great hillside meadow. It began at the barnyard, where the thrashing machine was making the sweat pour from a score of workers, to trickle and glisten upon their sun-scorched faces and bared, hairy chests. It clove the sea of gold-tinted grass straight to an island where a clump of pear trees reveled in the western sun; thence it wound down the slope to emerge into the road along the creek bottom. On that midway island, in the shade of the pear trees, sprawled in graceful idleness a boy of seventeen, like a young corn and wine god. His eyes were full of dreams; upon his handsome features lay a faint smile of content that it was summer and the free open air, with youth rollicking through his veins, and all the world before him in the glory of its veil of illusion and hope. His carelessly roving glance spied and paused upon a pale-blue sunbonnet far away, down toward the creek fence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.