The Voice of the People by Ellen Glasgow

On an October afternoon Nicholas Burr was walking along the branch road that led to his father's farm. He carried a well filled bag upon his shoulder, the musty surface of which betrayed that it contained freshly ground meal, but, despite the additional weight, his figure was unflinchingly erect. There was a splendid vigour in his thick-set frame and in the swinging strides of his hardy limbs. His face -- the square-jawed, large-featured face of a philosopher or a farmer -- possessed, with its uncompromising ugliness, a certain eccentric power. Rugged, gray, alert-eyed as it was, large-browed and overhung by his waving red hair -- it was a face to attract or to repel -- not to be ignored.

Now, as he swung on vigorously in the October light, there was about him a joyousness of purpose which belonged to his age and his aspirations. It was an atmosphere, an emanation thrown off by respiring vitality.