Excerpt from My Antonia, by Willa Cather Sometimes I went south to visit our German neighbors and to admire their catalpa grove, or to see the big elm tree that grew up out of a deep crack in the earth and had a hawk's nest in its branches. Excerpt from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain North of the house, inside the ploughed fire-breaks, grew a thick-set strip of box-elder trees, low and bushy, their leaves already turning yellow… What might be the shared theme of these excerpts? the values of farm life the simplicity of animals the importance of neighbors the beauty of nature