olesome humour may after all be more helpful than stern enforcement
of rules, and you know if there is one thing more than another we
mountain folks lack, it is a sense of humour! So, even on general
principles, it will do no harm to cultivate it.

"However, with all this cruel separation of tender hearts perhaps I am
in a fair way to become a cynical old bachelor instead of a
sentimentalist."

He was determined to write cheerfully, for he knew that she constantly
grieved over the alienation between Mr. Polk and himself, so his
letters usually held bright accounts of his work, though sometimes he
let her have a glimpse of the struggle which went on in his heart.

He wrote once after a contest with himself over natural desire for
more congenial surroundings:

"Little mother, when things seem too sordid and commonplace and barren
for endurance, as I confess they have a way of doing at times, I do
crave a look into your dear face. But as I am too far away to see you
clearly, I remember how you came down here and worked with dauntless
courage and good cheer, and I take heart again. Then several things
recently have contributed to make me ashamed of faint-heartedness, and
I really think I am going to develop some stronger fibre.

"The pathos of the mountain desire for 'larnin" has come to me
overwhelmingly lately. A woman came on foot forty miles over the
mountains last week bringing her daughter and seven others of
neighbours and friends to the school only to find there was no room
for them. But so great was the mother's distress and so appealing her
sacrifice and hardship in making the trip that one of our lady
teachers took the daughter into her own room rather than see the
mother disappointed. A few days later two boys came in having driven a
pair of lean goats over thirty miles hitched to a rude cart, which
held all the earthly possessions they could muster, the old father and
mother walking behind,--all hoping to buy entrance to the school for
the boys. They, too, were disappointed, for we are full to overflowing
this year. Then to cap the argument for stout-heartedness on my part,
I went for a stroll yesterday afternoon and came across a boy who is
making one of the bravest fights for an education that I ever saw. I
found him putting his shoulder to great boulders on the mountainside,
rolling them down and then setting himself to break them in pieces for
use in paving our little town,--for you must know that unde