...of a farmer

Ethan Frome drove in silence, the reins loosely held in his left hand, his brown-seamed profile, under the helmet-like peak of the cap, relieved against the banks of snow like the bronze image of a hero. He never turned his face to mine, or answered, except in monosyllables, the questions I put, or such slight pleasantries as I ventured. He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence.

[Ethan Frome, Wharton, E.]

- submitted by Pearce, M. A.