Raintree County

Look at the birdie... look at the tree.

My girls are the prettiest

known to the county.

That's all.

Mr. Durin, you've made us all immortal.

Young ladies and gentlemen...

Now, young ladies and gentlemen...

Alright, you cloud-headed.

You've still 2 weeks before graduation.

Let me remind you.

Mr. Durin's picture taking is completed.

You prepare yourself to Mr. Durin here

some time this week

an individual photograph

to appear in the Academy Album.

Miss Kader... why are you standing there

as if transfixed?

Is it because you've left your books

in the study at the expense of

your splendid youth and innocence

or is it because you've already entered

into the miserable Harvard womanhood

and beat with them?

Alright, stop all of that

or stop blushing

Johnny.

He's not here

0h, you mustn't see me hiding.

Hide what?

Happy graduation, Johnny.

Thank you.

Happy graduation to you.

Thank you

l guess we had the same idea

lsn't that nice?

We think the same thing

lsn't that crazy?

0pen your present, Johnny

lt's all about Raintree County

lt's illustrated with colored maps...

Statistics and history...

And place adventures

lt's wonderful... just wonderful.

Look... prominent citizens of

Raintree County.

There're over hundred of them

Johnny, someday your name will be

the first on that list.

Naturally

0pen yours, come on.

Well, l think you'll like it...

It weighs 6 lbs

0h, l think Lord Byron was the most

fascinating man ever lived.

He seemed so much in need of

a good woman to love and love him.

He never really found one.

Yes...

There's a photograph inside...

L wrote something on the back of it

Johnny, it's beautiful.

You know what l think?

L think someday you're going to be

a great writer

lt's just beautiful

l've never heard such nonsense

wasting 3 days write this.

What's this... a speech?

It's not nonsense

lt's an honor to be valid Victoria

lt goes to the student ranking first

in scholarship.

You know so much about it.

What did you ever valid... validate...

Whatever it's called?

Pap is valid Victoria for the whole

Raintree County.

Did you know that, Mom?

Your father?

Preaching a sermon to the most

undesirable element.

Waste the elegance there is in

a lot of ground.

It's the undesirable

element which we desire...

You object the Pap's elevating spiritual

welfare the people?

What about my spiritual welfare?

Why can't we get an inside pump?

Yeah, Pap... what about an inside pump?

That's not a joke.

What ever did learned you

at that school?

You learn a cup of beer?

Your mother has beaty confused

with Heidelberg.

You learn to smoke tobacco?

Like a chimney.

Huh, your father like that ...ever here

his sermon on the evils of tobacco

and with the regular pond some do it chew

and some do it smoke.

But some end up their nose do poke

l do all three the same time.

You learned anything else?

L learn my mother is a fraud and

what she says is hateful

that the way she says it.

You never amount anything like that.

Well, he ought to amount to something.

He's related to one of the greatest

writers in the English language.

Who's that?

Thomas Carlyle, that's who.

L think you're old enough to know that...

Joe, stop that foolishness.

Well, l always thought that one day

be a great man in the family.

Great man?

Is a great man more good to get a job

of farm this land.

Why ever was l cursed with such a burden?

0h... which reminds me.

How are you and Nell getting along?

Nell is a fine girl and she is...

Well, she's Raintree County.

That means a lot of people like us,

people with roots.

A man should not only marry his beloved.

He should marry his region.

A good wife is a good start,

taught greatness.

Pap, define greatness.

Greatness?

Well, a great man is one

who does good for others and.

I guess in that way your father qualifies.

Greatness?

Ha!

If that great philosopher Socrates

used living today,

lf he were used to sit on a crack

chewing tobacco...

That was America, that's the greatness.

Do l shock you?

How can l shock such unenlightened

cloud heads?

Are you stunned, Mrs. Lydia Gray?

0h, stop looking at me, child.

With those big brown cow eyes round milk

like wax in the flame.

Yeah.

Do l shock you, Miss Nell Kader?

Not as much as you like to

0h, there must be somebody l shoked.

How about you, Johnny Seanacy?

L... relish it.

You don't shock me

if you don't want shocking.

Thanks, my boy.

Now, about greatness.

We Americans measure greatness

in simple terms... in terms of money.

We're always hunting with a tree of life

whose root is pure gold...

You have beautiful chest-light color

hair, my dear.

But, there's another tree

not of gold, but of fulfillment...

Whose flower is accomplishment

and its fruit is love.

Most ways,

the ways of pleasantness

and most paths all lead to peace.

Find that tree and

you'll find greatness

ln every land, every language poems of

some of this tree.

And we in lndiana have our

own mythe about it.

It's the tree from which our county

takes its name

0ne day a ragged preacher, was

wandering on the shore of the lake

in the middle of the county.

That preacher was a man you all know,

Johnny Appleseed who spent his life

traveling to the pioneer West

planting apple seeds in the wilderness.

Among these thousands of seeds there

was one that ragged preacher cherised.

Not an appleseed, an

exotic seed from China,

the seed of a golden raintree.

The preacher searched the tiny earth place,

the one place.

Well, this one seed by taking root,

blandished.

Someone in this county found

that place.

But where that raintree was planting?

Nobody knows.

Professor, how could such a tree grow on

seeing in the county?

There's a great swamp by the Paradise Lake.

There perhaps stands the tree

lts sacred tonic trunk towering up

in the drawning silence

smacks deep in the middle of the county.

Find that tree, boy,

and you'll learn

the secret of life itself.

Find it and become the hero of

Raintree County.

Do you really think it there?

Why don't you have a real good see

for yourself?

Professor, you still haven't answered

the question.

Do you really think it there?

It's there, alright

lt's there...

But the sacred fire ready to be blacked.

But if you look for it.

Be sure you'll find it.

What happens if you pursued

the raintree and don't find it?

You see before you a seeker

who didn't find.

None of the human creature as the pitiable and

harmless creature you'll be hold in vain.

Alright, human... the show is over.

Now, disappear... all

of you, like phantoms.

Attention, now easily slip away.

Mrs. Gray, it's my time with you, huh?

Nell, let's you and l go to find

the raintree.

Professor said looking for the raintree

is appearless business.

It can't be so.

So even dressed for it?

Are you serious?

Certainly l am... come on.

We mind it... find it

Johnny, not now.

Why?

You scared?

Ah... is he fooling?

Look at him.

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