All these books you have lent me, Walter, have shown me what great and noble deeds there are to be done in the world--I don't mean in fighting, you know, but in other ways.

And they make the life here, toiling on the farm from sunrise to sunset, with no object save that of laying by every year more money, seem terribly empty and worthless.
"By the way, my grandfather was, yesterday evening, rating my father because, instead of always keeping me hard at work, he allowed me once or twice a week to be away for hours wasting my time--which means, though he didn't know it, going about with you.

My father said stoutly that he did not think the time was altogether wasted, for that, in the last two years, I had made a notable advance in learning, and he was satisfied that I had benefited much by these intervals of recreation.

Thereupon my grandfather grumbled that I was too fond of reading, and that I was filling my mind with all sorts of nonsense, whereas true wisdom was to be found in one book only.
"My father said that was true of religious wisdom, but that, for the advancement of the world, it was needed that men should learn other things.

Of course, my grandfather had three or four texts ready at hand; but my father had him by saying: 'You see, father, all the commands issued to the Jews are not strictly applicable to us--for example, they were ordered not to use horses; and I do not remember that Cromwell felt that he was doing wrong, when he raised his ironsides.' That was a poser, and so the matter dropped." Ten days later, when the boys met, John said: "This is the last time we shall meet for some time, Walter, for I am going up to Derry to stay with a cousin of my father, who is settled there and exercises the trade of a currier.