Across Five Aprils Quotes

War, he had thought, must give men that same feeling of strength and fulfillment. He had sympathized with Tom and Eb, and he had been angered at his father's command for silence when they grew loud...

Ellen counted Shadrach as a part of her family and looked after him as she did her own, and Shadrach Yale, in turn, showed a thoughtful courtesy for her that few women of the prairies received from...

War meant loud brass music and shining horses ridden by men wearing uniforms finer than any suit in the stores at Newton; it meant men riding like kings, looking neither to the right nor the left,...

Children might have priority to a pudding or the last piece of cake, but coffee was an adult luxury, which Jethro enjoyed but dismissed with a passive acceptance of family custom that he never thou...

Death, however, was neither simple nor lightly brushed aside when it struck home. Jethro frowned: he didn't like to think of his sister Mary's death, but some memory had been touched off as his tho...

"Well, read all you can. And newspapers, Jeth—study them. I know they're a little difficult, but you're a bright boy; you can get something out of them. The accounts you read in newspapers today...

"You hev hedged Ma's question, Cousin Wilse. What about the right and wrong of one man ownin' the body—and sometimes it looks as if the soul, too—of another man?" (2.17)

Shadrach smiled at the thing eager face turned up to him. He was mature enough at twenty to appreciate being a hero to a nine-year-old boy. (1.19)