One more quote from A Lantern In Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich. This one is on the fun side and made me smile. In this quote Abbie and her friend Sarah are at listening to a speech celebrating the beginnings of Nebraska about 50 years earlier.
And then it was time for the speech of the day. The young county attorney made it, from the airy heights of the band stand, at his side a glass of water on Abbie Deals's marble-topped table.
It was a good speech. It flapped its wings and soared over the oaks and elms, and eventually came home to roost with: "You...you were the intrepid people! You, my friends, were the sturdy one. You days have been magnificent poems of labor. Your years have been as heroic stories as the sagas. You lives have been dauntless, courageous, sweeping epics."
"'Sweeping' is the word, Sarah!' Abbie said when the applause had faded away into the grove. "I wish I had a dollar for every broom I've worn out."
Sarah Lutz's little black eyes twinkled.
"How about it, Abbie, do you feel like a poem?"
"No, Sarah, I was always too busy filling up the youngsters and getting patches on the overalls to notice that I was part of an epic."
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