Bendigo Shafter (1979) Read Online Free PDF

for the Lord's word than was proper, yet the sound of the words was a rolling music to my ears, and I longed for a command of them so that I might speak and write with wisdom.
    There was much history there, too, and it worried my mind that I did not know more about the lands of the Bible. Those ancient people spoke of things I knew, of flocks and shepherds and watches by night, and I wondered if those who reared up the mighty walls of Babylon had once begun as we now did, from a few simple walls, a stream, and a few cattle.
    The longing was in me for books other than the Bible, which was the only book we had brought west. Back at home I had read Jonathan Edwards' Freedom of the Will, which had been left at our house by a traveler when I was a child. It was that same traveler who'd left us William Penn's Some Fruits of Solitude.
    My father, who died when I was very young, had been a follower of the Reverend John Witherspoon, a Scottish minister whose philosophy of down-to-earth common sense appealed to him. Vaguely I remembered some supper-table discussion of this, and no doubt it had more to do with shaping Cain's thought than mine.
    Often when our wagons were rolling westward I would sit by the fire and listen to the talk of men, and especially, in the days before he died, to Ruth Macken's husband, who was an educated man. He was a tolerant and thoughtful one as well.
    He talked much of writers long dead and of the thoughts they had left to us, and I longed to know such men, men who had painted, composed music, or written books. Once when I had said as much, Macken commented, Often they are fine men, enough to be admired, but often they are sadly, weakly human, too. Remember this, Bendigo, that it is the work a man does that matters. Many men who have made mistakes in their own lives have created grandly, beautifully. It is this by which we measure a man, by what he does in this life, by what he creates to leave behind.
    Ruth Macken knew of my longing for knowledge, of my longing for a larger, brighter world somewhere beyond the distance. She was a woman to whom a boy might talk of things dreamed. There was understanding in her, and sympathy. Also, I thought, there was a longing in her for the same things. An Indian arrow had taken away her husband only a few days out upon the plains, and he was one who had none but kindly thoughts of Indians. A woman less strong might have turned back, but she had little money, nothing to return to, and a son to rear.
    She listened when I told her of John Sampson's talk of a school. Of course, we must have a school, but the building is less important than the teacher. It is the teacher who makes the school, no matter how magnificent the building.
    A school is wherever a man can learn, Mr. Shafter, do not forget that. A man can learn from these mountains and the trees, he can learn by listening, by seeing, and by hearing the talk of other men and thinking about what they say.
    Most of us in those days were pleased to have a roof above us and a solid earthen floor, but not Mrs. Macken.
    Mr. Shafter, she said, when I was counting my work finished, is there a way you can make planks for a floor?
    She was educating me in more ways than she knew, and from her I was beginning to learn the wiles of women and how they work upon a man's pride and vanity to get things done. Her phrasing was a shrewd thing, for it was a challenge to my show-off.
    Planks can be made, I admitted warily. They can be split from logs, but I'd say flat stones might do as well.
    I would prefer the plank, Mr. Shafter, and 'as well' is never good enough. The plank, if it would not be troubling you too much.
    Each day I worked for her she would stop at midafternoon and sit at the table to drink tea or coffee. We would eat small cakes and talk. She told me in confidence that Bud needed the rest, but it was the custom she liked, something left to her from another life. It was not long before I realized how shrewdly she guided me