How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"The loggeurs will be coming back into the woods. They stop over Sunday in Forestport."
Tom was puzzled. "Logguers?" he asked.
Bancel said with some score, "My brother has not learned English too good, even yet. He means the lumberjacks." (44.6-8)
Bancel Moucheaud and his brother Louis are French-Canadian, and their presence in the book, like mention of Irish settlers and Native Americans, adds to the picture of cultural diversity in the area. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many French Canadians immigrated to the US, often settling in states near the Canadian border and getting jobs as farmhands, lumberjacks, or millworkers.
Quote #8
They were passing through the Irish Settlement. There were no lights at all now, except their own traveling the edge of the road as Drew pulled the wagon in a steady trot. Once a door opened—they could hear the hinge squeak—but whoever looked out didn't have anything to say. Then they were rolling down the steep hill and five minutes later passing through Forestport.
There were lights in the saloons and Utley's harness shop, but the rest of the buildings were dark. Tom caught sight of a wall clock through the saloon window; he thought it said half past eleven.
"It'll be way past midnight when we get to Boonville," he said. (51.28-30)
Polly Ann and Tom's late-night treasure hunt gives one of the best impressions of all the varied kinds of people, places, and natural features sprawled through the region. In their journey, they pass lots of things: impoverished Irish families' shanties, saloons, roads to other towns, a church where a clergyman is consoling a woman, a shop with three old men sitting in front of a stove, and plenty of nature. Whew. All that traveling really drives home that establishing the sense of place in the area is very important, and Edmonds does it thoroughly.
Quote #9
Inside the walnut doors with their long glass panels Tom found himself in a place like nothing he had seen before. A counter ran all down one wall but it wasn't like any counter in a store. It had a wall with sort of windows in it, only they had gratings over them like prison windows. Three of them there were, each one with a man behind it. Two said "Teller" across the top of the gratings; the third one had the word "Cashier." Tom couldn't see any real difference in the men behind them, though. They had palish faces and the hands that kept coming out through the bottom of the gratings were pale too. It wasn't the kind of place he could feel easy in […] (53.3)
Like Tom's first experience shopping in a retail store, his first time going into the bank is disorienting and uncomfortable. This quote comes much later in the book than the shopping scene, but the fact that he doesn't feel "easy" shows how much his new experiences in town have an impact on him throughout the the book.