What I did like
about it was that one must know something first. I must acquire
knowledge before I could impart it, and that was just what I
wanted. I could be a student, wherever I was and whatever else I
had to be or do, and I would!
I knew I should write; I could not help doing that, for my hand
seemed instinctively to move towards pen and paper in moments of
leisure. But to write anything worth while, I must have mental
cultivation; so, in preparing myself to teach, I could also be
preparing myself to write.
This was the plan that indefinitely shaped itself in my mind as I
returned to my work in the spinning-room, and which I followed
out, not without many breaks and hindrances and neglects, during
the next six or seven years,--to learn all I could, so that I
should be fit to teach or to write, as the way opened. And it
turned out that fifteen or twenty of my best years were given to
teaching.
VIII.
BY THE RIVER.
IT did not take us younger ones long to get acquainted with our
new home, and to love it.
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