ooks, papers, and learning more things that help, to teach other
people. I wished father had time to take our school. It would have
been some fun to go to him, because I just knew he would use the woods
for the room, and teach us things it would do some good to know about.

I began debating whether it was a big enough thing to bother the Lord
with: this being penned up in the schoolhouse droning over spelling and
numbers, when you could smell tree bloom, flower bloom, dozens of birds
were nesting, and everything was beginning to hum with life. I
couldn't think for that piece about "Spring" going over in my head:

"I am coming, I am coming:
Hark! the little bee is humming:
See! the lark is soaring high,
In the bright and sunny sky;
All the birds are on the wing:
Little maiden, now is spring."

I made up my mind that it was of enough importance to call for the
biggest prayer I could think of and that I would go up in the barn to
the top window, stand on a beam, and turn my face to the east, where
Jesus used to be, and I'd wrestle with the Lord for freedom, as Jacob
wrestled with the Angel on the banks of the Jabbok in the land of
Ammon. I was just getting up steam to pray as hard as ever I could;
for days I'd been thinking of it, and I was nearly to the point where
one more killdeer crying across the sky would have sent me headlong
from the schoolhouse anywhere that my feet were on earth, and the air
didn't smell of fried potatoes, kraut, sweat, and dogs, like it did
whenever you sat beside Clarissa Polk. When I went to supper one
night; father had been to Groveville, and he was busy over his papers.
After he finished the blessing, he seemed worried, at last he said the
funds were all out, and the county would make no appropriation so
school would have to close next week.

Well that beats me! I had faith in that prayer I was going to make,
and here the very thing I intended to ask for happened before I prayed.
I decided I would save the prayer until the next time I couldn't stand
anything another minute, and then I would try it with all my might, and
see if it really did any good. After supper I went out the back door,
spread my arms wide, and ran down the orchard to the fence in great
bounds, the fastest I ever went in my life. I climbed my pulpit in the
corner and tried to see how much air my lungs would hold without
bursting, while I waved my arms and shouted at the top of my voice:
"P