"Well, then, that's just what the church tells me when
I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too, sir, for
I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when they come
home, if they do come home, they're none the worse that I went to the old
church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them poor dears, all
out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone almost in the
quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come across me, sir,
that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing all the noise
and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about in the world,
watching it all, letting it drown some o' them and take them back to him,
and keeping it from going too far with others of them that are not quite
ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see, sir, though I be an old
woman; and not nice to look at."
I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes!
Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but
there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will
to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert would
leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose.
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