Sometime in their lives, everybody wanted to go home.

Junior was eleven. The statement is significant. There are a few peevish people in the world who believe that all eleven-year-old boys ought to be hung. Others, less irritable, think that gently chloroforming them would seem more humane. A great many good-natured folks contend that incarceration for a couple of years would prove the best way to dispose of them.

Our souls may all be equal in the sight of the Lord, but our gumption and ingenuity ain't. So the results of man's labor will never be equal.

Things last so much longer than people.

not all clever words are true. ... And inversely most things that are true are not clever.

Mrs. Schneiderman's theory of life was that earth held no sorrow that food could not heal.

In 1846 the prairie town of Oak River existed only in a settler's dream.