Jerusalem

Gives with wonderful truth and simplicity the story of a group of peasants in Dalacarlia. It is all made into an artistic whole through the weaving together of incidents in the lives of the Ingmarssons of Ingmar farm, farmers, pastor, school-master, shopkeeper and innkeeper, and it ends with the departure of many families for Jerusalem, fired by the religious zeal of a practical mystic from Chicago. Translated by Velma Swanston Howard. Show Excerpt to the farmhouse–” The plowman suddenly stopped in the middle of a furrow and glanced up, laughing. These thoughts seemed to amuse him greatly, and he was so carried away by them that he hardly knew whether or not he was still upon earth. It seemed to him that in a twinkling he had been lifted all the way up to his old father in heaven. “And now as I come into the living-room,” he went on, “I see many peasants seated on benches along the walls. All have sandy hair, white eyebrows, and thick underlips. They are all of them as like father as one pea is like another. At the sight of so many people I become shy and linger at the door. Father sits at the head of the table, and the instant he sees me he says; ‘Welcome, little Ingmar Ingmarsson ‘ Then father gets up and comes over to me. ‘I’d like to have a word with you, father, ‘ I say, ‘but there are so many strangers here.’ ‘Oh, these are only relatives ‘ says father. ‘All these men have lived at the Ingmar Farm, and the oldest among them is from way back