But one book she had got called The Pilgrim's Progress, printed by missionaries in a far-away city called Philadelphia, which told of things as marvellous, and had pictures, too--one especially of a young man covered with tin, which she supposed was what they called armour.

And there was another called The Arabian Knights, a close-printed thing difficult to read by the winter fire, full of wilder doings than any she could imagine for herself; but beautiful, too, and delicious to muse over, though Tom, when she read a chapter to him, had condemned it as a pack of lies....

Clearly there was a world somewhere, perhaps outside America altogether, far more wonderful than even the magnificence of Colonel Hardin.

Once she had hoped to find it herself; then that her children should find it.

And the end was this shack in the wilderness, a few acres of rotting crops, bitter starving winters, summers of fever, the deeps of poverty, a penniless futureless family, and for herself a coffin of green lumber and a yard or two of stony soil.
She saw everything now with the clear unrelenting eyes of childhood.
The films she had woven for selfprotection were blown aside.