I didn't know what I could do to pay them, for they saved me sure as fate that time.
I wished we lived in the woods the way it was when father and mother were married and moved to Ohio.

The nearest neighbours were nine miles, and there wasn't a dollar for school funds, so of course the children didn't have to go, and what their fathers and mothers taught them was all they knew.

That would not have helped me much though, for we never had one single teacher who knew anything to compare with what father and mother did, and we never had one who was forever reading books, papers, and learning more things that help, to teach other people.

I wished father had time to take our school.

It would have been some fun to go to him, because I just knew he would use the woods for the room, and teach us things it would do some good to know about.
I began debating whether it was a big enough thing to bother the Lord with: this being penned up in the schoolhouse droning over spelling and numbers, when you could smell tree bloom, flower bloom, dozens of birds were nesting, and everything was beginning to hum with life.