Thus it came about that on the shelf over his bed he had a more choice collection of books--few as they were in number--than the squire or the parson, and these books he had read until he not only understood them himself, but could impart them to others.
This white-bearded and venerable village philosopher would sit by his cabin door upon a summer evening, and was never so pleased as when some of the young fellows would slip away from their bowls and their quoit-playing in order to lie in the grass at his feet, and ask him questions about the great men of old, their words and their deeds.

But of all the youths I and Reuben Lockarby, the innkeeper's son, were his two favourites, for we would come the earliest and stop the latest to hear the old man talk.

No father could have loved his children better than he did us, and he would spare no pains to get at our callow thoughts, and to throw light upon whatever perplexed or troubled us.
Like all growing things, we had run our heads against the problem of the universe.

We had peeped and pryed with our boyish eyes into those profound depths in which the keenest-sighted of the human race had seen no bottom.

Yet when we looked around us in our own village world, and saw the bitterness and rancour which pervaded every sect, we could not but think that a tree which bore such fruit must have something amiss with it.