All I know I learn from him, from what he reads aloud, and places he takes me.

I exist in a twenty-mile radius, but through him, I know all lands, principalities and kingdoms, peoples and customs.

I need never be ashamed to go, or afraid to speak, anywhere." "Indeed not!" cried Mr.Pryor.
"But when you think on the essentials of a real lady--and then picture me patching, with a First Reader propped before me; facing Indians, Gypsies, wild animals--and they used to be bad enough--why, I mind one time in Ohio when our first baby was only able to stand beside a chair, and through the rough puncheon floor a copperhead stuck up its gleam of bronzy gold, and shot its darting tongue within a foot of her bare leg.
By all accounts, a lady would have reached for her smelling salts and gracefully fainted away; in fact, a lady never would have been in such a place at all.

It was my job to throw the first thing I could lay my hands on so straight and true that I would break that snake's neck, and send its deadly fangs away from my baby.

I did it with Paul's plane, and neatly too! Then I had to put the baby on the bed and tear up every piece of the floor to see that the snake had not a mate in hiding there, for copperheads at that season were going pairs.