I used to sit among their cool green stems,--thinking
many thoughts, chief among which was a wonder why God had made my
little mother so unhappy. I heard afterwards that God was not to
blame,--only man, breaking God's laws of equity. She was a good
brave woman, for despite her loneliness and tears, she worked hard;-
-worked to send me to school, and to teach me all she herself knew--
which was little enough, poor soul,--but she studied in order to
instruct me,--and often when I slept the unconscious sleep of
healthy childhood, she was up through half the night spelling out
abstruse books, difficult enough for an educated woman to master,
but for a peasant--(she was nothing more)--presenting almost
superhuman obstacles. I was very quick to learn, and her loving
patience was not wasted upon me;--but when I was about eleven years
old I resolved that I could no longer burden her with the expenses
of my life--so without asking her consent, I hired myself out to a
farmer, to clear weeds from his fields, and so began to earn my
bread, which is the best and noblest form of knowledge existing in
the world for all of us. With the earning of my body's keep came
spiritual independence, and young as I was I began to read and
consider for myself--till when I was about fifteen chance brought me
across the path of a man whose example inspired me and decided my
fate, named Aubrey Leigh.
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