For the rest, we amused ourselves as best we could.

Father and mother were preoccupied with the store day and night; and not so much with weighing and measuring and making change as with figuring out how long it would take the outstanding accounts to ruin the business entirely.

If my mother had scruples against her children resorting to a building with a cross on it, she did not have time to formulate them.

If my father heard us talking about Morgan Chapel, he dismissed the subject with a sarcastic characterization, and wanted to know if we were going to join the Salvation Army next; but he did not seriously care, and he was willing that the children should have a good time.

And if my parents had objected to Morgan Chapel, was the sidewalk in front of the saloon a better place for us children to spend the evening?
They could not have argued with us very long, so they hardly argued at all.
In Polotzk we had been trained and watched, our days had been regulated, our conduct prescribed.