and an expedition to the spot was planned for some half-holiday.  Question after question led back to the origin of the earth.  She found the nebular hypothesis, and hardly slept one night trying to comprehend it clearly enough to put it before others in a simple fashion.  Her book was always at hand.  By and by they classified each specimen, and the best of their kind were taken to shelves in the sitting-room.  Her own enthusiasm in study was aroused, and, far from a hardship, it now became a delight.  Her spirit was contagious.  The boys, always fond of “mother,” wondered what new life possessed her; but they accepted the change all the same.  She found that she could teach, and also could inspire her pupils.  They heard of a gully, five or six miles away, where crystals had been found.  Making a holiday, for which the boys worked like Trojans, they took their lunch in the farm wagon, and rode to the spot; and if their search was not altogether successful, it left them the memory of a happy time.

In the meantime the farm prospered.  She did all the work in the house and all the sewing, going out, too, in the garden, where she raised a few flowers, and helping to gather vegetables.  Daniel and the boys were bitterly opposed to her helping them.  “Mother,” said Jerry, “if you won’t ever think you must go out, I’ll do any thing to make up.  I don’t want you to look like those women we see sometimes in the fields.”  Generally she yielded; her work was enough for one pair of hands.  Through it all now ran the thought that her children were growing up; they would become educated men; she would not let them get ahead, not so as to pass her entirely.

Winter came.  Now Daniel could see to the work; but these habits of study were not to be broken.  “Boys, let us form a history club,” was the proposition; “it shan’t interfere with your lessons at school.”  They took the history of the United States, which the two younger children were studying.  Beginning with the New England settlements, and being six in number, they called each other, for the time, after the six States, persuading old Daniel to take his native Rhode Island.  “That woman beats all creation,” he was heard to exclaim, “the way she works all day and goes on at night over her books.”  The mother used to say she hardy knew if she were any older than her boys when they were trying to trip each other with questions.  The teacher of the district school came over one Saturday afternoon.  “I never had such pupils,” said he, “as your sons, in history; and indeed they want to look into every thing.”  Afterward he heard with delight the story of their evening’s work.  The deep snows often shut them in, but the red light shone clearly and bright from that sitting-room window, and a merry group were gathered around the table.  Every two weeks an evening was given to some journey.  It was laid out in advance, and faithfully studied.  Once, Theodore remembers, a shout of laughter was