In America there was only one class, the people’s class, and only one nobility — the nobility of honest work.
In America there were no taxes and no examinations in the catechism.
In America you need not pay the minister’s salary if you did not like his sermons.
All sounded too good to be true, and during the long winter evenings Robert read to his brother and sister-in-law about the strange roads of iron which existed throughout the United States:
“In America one travels a great deal with the help of steam and steam wagons, but for this are required roads which are built in a peculiar way and which are called iron roads or railroads. Such a road must be almost even and practically level. On the road are placed crossbars of wood and to these are tied strong iron rails which serve to guide the wagons. The wagon wheels have on their inside a rim all the way around which forces them to follow the rail on the road.
“On such roads one travels with great speed, twelve to eighteen miles an hour, nay, even faster. Several big wagons are tied together and pulled by a steam wagon, or that wagon on which the steam engine is placed. At the end of each wagon is a small bridge which enables the traveler to pass from one wagon to another during the journey, should he desire to speak to an acquaintance. Every wagon has a comfort room which makes it unnecessary to leave the wagon even on a long journey.
“These railroads, where with the help of steam one can enjoy a comfortable and inspiring journey, have now in America a length of 8,000 miles. . ”
Kristina said: “It will be fun to ride with no beast pulling the wagon!”
She enjoyed riding in all kinds of vehicles, and in spite of her years she most of all, still, enjoyed swinging on a rope. Only a few days ago Karl Oskar had surprised her in the threshing barn, where she had again fastened the ox-thong to the beams and sat riding the swing.
There was now something she wondered about: “How can they steer the wagons when the railroad is snowed under in wintertime?”
“I don’t know,” said Robert, “perhaps they stable the wagons during the winter.”
The book also said that no steam wagons were in use on Sundays. The drivers were at church, of course; and maybe the steam also needed rest to gather strength.
“I wonder about those iron rails,” said Karl Oskar. “They lie without guards in the wilderness, night and day. Isn’t the iron stolen?”
Robert told him with a superior smile, there was such an abundance of iron in America that no one cared to steal as much as the filings of a saw. And it was the same with gold and silver. Why should people steal and go to jail when they had more than they needed of everything? In America it was so easy to earn one’s living in an honest way that no one was tempted to dishonesty. A thief was immediately strung up, often before he even had time to confess his crime. Therefore all thieves in that country were now exterminated. The gentry here at home lied in saying that North America was full of robbers and murderers and wickedness, when in truth it was populated by the most honest and upright people in the whole world.
“They must have an occasional scoundrel there, too,” Karl Oskar said.
Robert admitted that this might be so but insisted that evil people were exterminated much more quickly than here at home.
Karl Oskar wished to settle in that part of the country where soil was the most fertile. Robert had read that the best regions for farmers were around the upper end of the great river Mississippi and its tributaries. This neighborhood was fertile, healthy, and rich in forests and beautiful mountains, in valleys and spring waters. The grass thereabouts was so abundant that in two days a man could cut and harvest sufficient winter fodder for a cow, and in three days enough for a horse. One farmer who had cultivated land on the Mississippi shores had in five years earned a bushel of gold.
Kristina did not wish to live in a place where there were crocodiles. Recently she had read in a paper a horrible tale about a settler family in America who had happened to spend a night in a cave where crocodiles were nesting. Early in the morning the man went out to hunt, and when he returned his wife and three children had been eaten by the crocodiles. The old crocodile had just swallowed the wife: only the head of the poor woman was still visible in the mouth of the beast, who had choked and lay there dead; the ground was drenched in human blood. Kristina could not forget the poor mother watching the crocodile feast on her small children while she was waiting her turn. But of course the woman had taken revenge by choking the beast with her own head.
Robert had never read about man-eating crocodiles in America; the piece in the paper must have been a lie; some duke or count must have had it printed to discourage simple folk from emigration.
Arvid, whom Robert had met again, had also been afraid of wild beasts in America. He had had to leave his service in Nybacken; Aron did not wish to keep a servant called the Bull. The old mistress was dead and Arvid was sure she came back to him in the stable room, accusing him of having tried to kill her — which indeed was true — so he had moved without regret. But he had asked at many farms before he found work; he was known everywhere as the Bull from Nybacken. At last he was hired by Danjel in Kärragärde, who was unable to find another hand this winter. All servants were afraid of the place now that the devil had moved in there. People had actually seen the Evil One hanging to the back of Danjel’s wagon as he drove along the roads; sometimes he even occupied the seat next to the driver, laughing and pleased. The devil was now the real master on that farm.
Arvid was saving every penny of his wages for his transportation to America. For a whole month he had bought no brännvin. Long before his confirmation he had learned to chew snuff (although children weren’t supposed to use it before they had participated in the Lord’s Supper); he would save three daler a year if he stopped, and this would help him a bit on the road to America. He realized he must give up some things in the Old World to make possible his move to the New; so he had thrown his snuffbox on the dunghill.
But giving up the box was difficult for Arvid. It had been good company for him, he had carried it in his pocket and enjoyed its contents. It had been a loyal companion in work and loneliness. The snuffbox had been his only friend after Robert moved. And now he had thrown it away — into the depths of the dunghill. He felt his pain keenly when others brought forth their boxes and used them without offering him a pinch: then he had to turn away to escape the sight of the refreshing mixture.
He admitted to Robert that after three weeks of suffering he had bought a new snuffbox. And again he bought half a gallon of brännvin each Saturday night. For at last he had clearly understood that a person had no right to treat his God-given body according to his own will; he had no right to torture and plague it and deny it all its pleasures; one could not treat one’s body like a dog, denying it even the comfort of snuff.
Would Arvid ever follow him on the road to America? Robert did not believe so; apparently, in one year and a half, he had not saved a single daler; in his whole life he would be unable to save two hundred daler.
But in Korpamoen everything was now being put in order.
One day the Nilsa family’s old clothes chest — of solid oak painted black — was pulled forward from its place in a cobweb-infested corner of the attic, and carried down into the kitchen for inspection and dusting. No one knew how old this chest was — the hands which made it were mixed with the earth of the churchyard many hundreds of years ago. It had passed from father to son through numerous generations. More than one young bridegroom had entrusted his finery to it after the wedding feast, more than once had the farm’s women fetched winding sheets from it when there was a corpse in the house to shroud. Under the lid of the chest valuable things had been secreted; this lid had been lifted by the shaking hands of old women, and by young, strong, maiden fingers. It had been approached mostly at life’s great happenings: baptisms, weddings, and funerals. This enduring piece of furniture had through centuries followed the family, and at last been pushed away into a dark attic corner where it had long remained undisturbed. Now it was pulled out into the daylight once more; it was the roomiest and strongest packing case they could find — five feet long and three feet high, wrought with strong iron bands three fingers wide.