I don't want anybody to give me any help, nor to think of me; I can work my own way, if you'll only let me and not be troubled about me." He had risen from his chair to speak this.

His mother kept her face in the shadow and said quietly, "What way will you take, Winthrop ?" "I don't know, ma'am, yet; I haven't found out." "Do you know the difficulties in the way ?" "No, mother." It was said in the tone not of proud but of humble determination.
"My boy, they are greater than you think for, or than I like to think of at all." "I dare say, mother." "I don't see how it is possible for your father to do more than put Will in the way he has chosen." "I know that, mother," Winthrop replied, with again the calm face but the flushing colour; -- "he said yesterday -- I heard him -- " "What ?" "He said he would try to make a man of Rufus! I must do it for myself, mother.

And I will." His mother hardly doubted it.

But she sighed as she looked, and sighed heavily.
"I ought to have made you promise not to be troubled, mamma," he said with a relaxing face.
"I am more careful of my promises than that," she answered.
"But, Winthrop, my boy, what do you want to do first ?" "To learn, mamma!" he said, with a singular flash of fire in his usual cool eye.

"To get rid of ignorance, and then to get the power that knowledge gives.