He left hastily, the business of the Church pressing.
In his idea it seemed that the rudiments of a language would take no longer to acquire than the contents of an English book written in a popular style.

The man was very ignorant of the things that most men know, but possibly no other man in the world would have known that writing Latin exercises would bring contentment to Susannah's heart.
There was nothing in such a request to awake suspicion and antagonism, and there was much in the regular mental exercise to keep her mind from brooding on its scepticism or upon Ephraim's kindness.

As a child sits down to an intricate game, she sat down, day after day, to her lesson.
Soon the stimulus of knowing that the prophet had actually mastered his grammar in two weeks wrought the determination not to lag very far behind.

Her husband, who had had fair schooling, helped her.
There began to be a strange race between the prophet and Susannah for the acquisition of knowledge.

They learned out of all sorts of lesson-books, not on any sound principle of work, but with avidity.
Susannah was the only woman in the new sect to whom Joseph Smith gave the commandment to become learned.