[Hills of the Shatemuc by Susan Warner]@TWC D-Link bookHills of the Shatemuc CHAPTER II 4/11
-- Rufus, I guess you'll have to go up into the woods to-morrow with the ox-sled -- you and Sam Doolittle -- back of the pine wood -- you'll find enough dead trees there, I guess." "I think," said Rufus, "that if you think of it, what are called substantial things are the least substantial of any -- they are only the scaffolding of the other." "Of what other ?" said his father. "Of the things which really last, sir, -- the things which belong to the _mind_ -- things which have to do with something besides the labour of to-day and the labour of to-morrow." "The labour of to-day and the labour of to-morrow are pretty necessary though," said his father dryly; "we must eat, in the first place.
You must keep the body alive before the mind can do much -- at least I have found it so in my own experience." "But you don't think the less of the other kind of work, sir, do you ?" said Winthrop looking up; -- "when one can get at it ?" "No, my boy," said the father, -- "no, Governor; no man thinks more highly of it than I do.
It has always been my desire that you and Will should be better off in this respect than I have ever been; -- my great desire; and I haven't given it up, neither." A little silence of all parties. "What are the things which 'really last,' Rufus ?" said his mother. Rufus made some slight and not very direct answer, but the question set Winthrop to thinking. He thought all the evening; or rather thought and fancy took a kind of whirligig dance, where it was hard to tell which was which.
Visions of better opportunities than his father ever had; -- of reaching a nobler scale of being than his own early life had promised him; -- of higher walks than his young feet had trod: they made his heart big.
There came the indistinct possibility of raising up with him the little sister he held in his arms, not to the life of toil which their mother had led, but to some airy unknown region of cultivation and refinement and elegant leisure; -- hugely unknown, and yet surely laid hold of by the mind's want.
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