Wait, while I fetch a copy book out of the parlor press." She highly amused her sisters with a description of what she called her "newly instituted Polynesian Academy;" returned, and set to work to guide the rough, coarse hand through the mysteries of calligraphy.
To say this was an easy task would not be true.

Nature's own laws and limits make the using of faculties which have been unused for generations very difficult at first.

To suppose that a working man, the son of working men, who applies himself to study, does it with as little trouble as your upper-class children, who have been unconsciously undergoing education ever since the cradle, is a great mistake.

All honor, therefore, to those who do attempt, and to ever so small a degree succeed in, the best and wisest culture of all, self-culture.
Of this honor Elizabeth deserved her share.
"She is stupid enough," Hilary confessed, after the lesson was over; "but there is a dogged perseverance about the girl which I actually admire.

She blots her fingers, her nose, her apron, but she never gives in; and she sticks to the grand principle of one thing at a time.