I do it that I may give to you--my countrymen--the best fruitage of the great garden of my youth and save it from the cold storage of unknowing history.
It is a bad thing to be under a heavy obligation to one's self of which, thank God, I am now acquitted.

I have known men who were their own worst creditors.

Everything they earned went swiftly to satisfy the demands of Vanity or Pride or Appetite.

I have seen them literally put out of house and home, thrown neck and crop into the street, as it were, by one or the other of these heartless creditors--each a grasping usurer with unjust claims.
I remember that Rodney Barnes called for my chest and me that fine morning in early June when I was to go back to the hills, my year's work in school being ended.

I elected to walk, and the schoolmaster went with me five miles or more across the flats to the slope of the high country.
I felt very wise with that year's learning in my head.