These Happy Golden Years

These Happy Golden Years, the eighth book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, follows Laura Ingalls from her first teaching job at age 15 through her courtship and marriage to Almanzo Wilder, set in and around the small Dakota Territory town of De Smet in the early 1880s.

On a bitter winter Sunday, Pa drives Laura by bobsled 12 miles to the Brewster settlement, where she has been hired to teach a two-month term despite having no experience. At the Brewster claim shanty, a crude one-room shack on a homestead claim, Laura meets the Brewster family. Mrs. Brewster resents boarding the teacher and barely speaks. Each night she quarrels at her husband, wanting to return East. Laura sleeps on a narrow sofa in an unheated room, homesick and dreading each morning.

Her five pupils range from young Ruby and Tommy Brewster to teenagers Martha and Charles Harrison and Clarence Brewster, who is older and bigger than Laura. Clarence tests her authority from the start, scrawling punishments oversized on the blackboard, refusing history lessons, and eventually driving his knife through Martha's braid, pinning it to the desk. Laura yanks the knife out and shames him but knows anger alone cannot sustain discipline.

On the first Friday, Almanzo Wilder, a young homesteader, arrives with his horses Prince and Lady hitched to a cutter, a small sleigh he built himself, and drives Laura home for the weekend. Home is a haven: Laura catches up with family and friends, attends church, and draws strength from Pa's fiddle music. Each Sunday, Almanzo returns her to the Brewsters'. Pa advises patience with Clarence rather than force, and Ma suggests ignoring his bids for attention. Laura follows their counsel, assigning Clarence shorter lessons and helping each pupil individually. Clarence responds, studying on his own at night, and the school grows calmer.

With three weeks left, Laura tells Almanzo bluntly that she rides with him only to get home and will not go with him once her term ends. She immediately regrets the words. That week, temperatures plunge to 40 below zero and colder. One night Laura wakes to screaming: Mrs. Brewster stands in moonlight holding the butcher knife, telling her husband that if she cannot go home one way, she can go another. Mr. Brewster talks her down. Laura tells no one, knowing her parents would forbid her return.

Despite the deadly cold, Almanzo comes on Friday. Every two miles he must thaw ice forming over the horses' noses, and Laura grows dangerously sleepy, a sign of freezing to death. They arrive safely. Later, Almanzo explains he nearly turned back, but his friend Cap Garland saw him hesitating and said, "God hates a coward" (77). Almanzo decided Cap was right.

On the last day of the term, Laura's pupils surprise her with small gifts. Clarence returns alone and mutters that he is sorry he was so mean. Almanzo picks Laura up, saying "Good-by" instead of his usual promise to return. Laura thinks the sleigh rides are over. Yet back home, watching sleigh-riding parties fill the street, she feels forgotten until Almanzo's bells stop at her door. She cries "Oh, yes!" to his invitation, having forgotten her own declaration, and they join the parade of sleighs up and down Main Street.

Pa gives Laura her 40 dollars of teaching salary, and she gives it all to him for the college expenses of her older sister Mary, who is blind and attending a school in Iowa. The months that follow bring a steady rhythm of work and courtship. Laura returns to the town school, works Saturdays sewing for Mrs. McKee, the town's dressmaker, and spends a summer on the McKees' homestead claim to satisfy a legal residency requirement. Mary visits from college, more confident and self-assured, bringing handmade beadwork gifts. Pa confesses a restless urge to go farther West but commits to staying until he proves up his claim, fulfilling the legal requirements to own his homestead.

That winter, Almanzo and Cap break a pair of wild colts no other man in town will ride behind. Laura agrees without hesitation, and Sunday rides resume. She earns a second-grade teaching certificate and teaches a happy three-month school near the family homestead. Pa proposes buying an organ so Mary can play music at home, and Laura contributes her 75 dollars of school money.

Ma sews Laura a fashionable brown poplin dress. When Almanzo lays his arm along the buggy seat one Sunday, Laura shakes the whip to startle the colts, forcing him to use both hands on the reins. He calls her independent; she agrees. When Nellie Oleson, a longtime rival, intrudes on the Sunday drives, Laura outmaneuvers her: She deliberately startles the colts to frighten Nellie and tells Almanzo to choose between them. He comes alone the following Sunday.

Having sold the colts at a profit, Almanzo buys two former runaways, Barnum and Skip. Laura helps break them through summer and fall, discovering that Barnum responds better to her driving. One starlit evening, Almanzo slips a gold ring set with a garnet and two pearls onto Laura's finger. He promises to build a little house on his tree claim, the homestead parcel where he has planted a grove of saplings. Ma worries Laura cares more for the horses than their master. Laura replies, "I couldn't have one without the other" (216).

Almanzo departs for Minnesota to visit family, and his letters stop for three weeks. Laura fears he has forgotten her until, on Christmas Eve, a knock sounds: Almanzo has driven back through several states, bringing oranges and a gold bar pin. In spring, Laura teaches her final school at 30 dollars a month, her highest salary. Her earnings go toward her trousseau, a bride's collection of clothing and household goods. Mary comes home for the summer, and Laura gives 15 dollars to Pa for Mary's expenses, wanting to help one last time.

One Tuesday, Almanzo comes urgently. His sister Eliza Jane is planning a large church wedding and traveling west to take charge. He asks Laura to marry him before his family arrives. Laura agrees but insists she will not promise to obey. Almanzo says he never expected her to.

Pa buys Laura a trunk. She packs her old rag doll Charlotte at the bottom, clothes and linens, the pink lawn dress on top, and her hat in a hatbox. Ma gives her a quilt, feather pillows, and a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. Pa leads out Laura's favorite cow as a parting gift. The evening before the wedding, Pa plays his fiddle one last time, all the songs from their life together.

On a Thursday morning, Laura wears a black cashmere dress, a sage-green poke bonnet, Ma's gold brooch, and her sister Carrie's lace handkerchief. At Reverend Brown's parlor, Ida Brown, Laura's close friend, and Elmer McConnell, Ida's beau, serve as witnesses, and the ceremony is simple, with no promise to obey. Ida gives Laura a fichu, a delicate lace shoulder scarf. They return home for a wedding dinner, then drive to the little gray house on the tree claim, standing in a grove of young saplings. Laura explores her new home: a front room with rocking chairs and Ma's red-checked cloth on the table, a bedroom, a pantry, and a lean-to kitchen. They eat a simple supper, then sit on the doorstep as evening falls. Almanzo says it is a wonderful night. Laura answers that it is a beautiful world, and in memory she hears Pa's fiddle singing, "Golden years are passing by, / These happy, golden years" (289).