Rufus said the other day that knowledge is power, and I know he was right.

I feel like a man with his hands tied, because I am so ignorant." "You are hardly a man yet, Winthrop; you are only a boy in years." "I am almost sixteen, mother, and I haven't taken the first step yet." What should the first step be?
A question in the minds of both; the answer -- a blank.
"How long have you been thinking of this ?" "Since last spring, mother." "Didn't Will's going put it in your head ?" "That gave me the first thought; but it would have made no difference, mother; it would have come, sooner or later.

I know it would, by my feeling ever since." Mrs.Landholm's eye wandered round the room, the very walls in their humbleness and roughness reminding her anew of the labour and self-denial it had cost to rear them, and then to furnish them, and that was now expended in keeping the inside warm.

Every brown beam and little window-sash could witness the story of privation and struggle, if she would let her mind go back to it; the associations were on every hand; neither was the struggle over.

She turned her back upon the room, and sitting down in Winthrop's chair bent her look as he had done into the decaying bed of coals.
He was standing in the shadow of the mantelpiece, and looking down in his turn scanned her face and countenance as a little while before she had scanned his.