“I have come here,” he said, “with but one purpose, and that is to try to teach you things which will do you the most good in life.  That is always the best which will do the most good; all else is inferior.  I shall first teach you to obey your sense of right in all things.  This is the first principle of a true education.  You will always know the way of life if you have this principle for your guide.

“Conscience is the first education.  A man’s spiritual nature is his highest nature, and his spiritual concerns transcend all others.  If a man is spiritually right, he is the master of all things.  I would impress these truths on your minds, and teach them at the beginning.  I have become willing to be poor, and to walk life’s ways alone.  The pilot of the Argo never returned from Colchis, but the Argo itself returned with the Golden Fleece.  It may be so with my work; if so, I will be content.  I have selected for our Scripture lesson the ‘incorruptible seed.’”

He rose and spoke like one before an august assembly; and so it was to him, with his views of the future of the great empire of the Northwest.  A part of the pupils could not comprehend all that he said any more than they had understood the allusion to the pilot of the Argo; but his manner was so gracious, so earnest, so inspired, that they all felt the spirit of it, and some had come to regard themselves as the students of some great destiny.

“Older domes than the pyramids are looking down upon you,” he said, “and you are born to a higher destiny than were ever the children of the Pharaohs.”

“With the exception of Gretchen, not one of the pupils fully understood the picturesque allusion.  Like the reference to the pilot of the Argo, it was poetic mystery to them; and yet it filled them with a noble curiosity to know much and a desire to study hard, and to live hopefully and worthily.  Like the outline of some unknown mountain range, it allured them to higher outlooks and wider distances.

“He talked to us so grandly,” said Gretchen to Mrs. Woods one evening, “that I did not know half that he was saying; but it made me feel that I might be somebody, and I do intend to be.  It is a good thing to have a teacher with great expectations.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Woods, “when there is so little to expect.  People don’t take a lot of nothing and make a heap of something in this world.  It is all like a lot of feathers thrown against the wind. Nevertheless it makes one happier to have prospects, if they are far away.  I used to; but they never came to nothing, unless it was to bring me way out here.”

The log school-house was a curious place.  The children’s benches consisted of split logs on pegs, without backs.  The sides of the building were logs and sods, and the roof was constructed of logs and pine boughs.  All of the children were barefooted, and several had but poor and scanty clothing.  Yet the very simplicity of the place had a charm.