Why should we need extra time in which to enjoy ourselves? If we expect to enjoy our life, we will have to learn to be joyful in all of it, not just at stated intervals when we can get time or when we have nothing else to do.

We had no choice. Sadness was a dangerous as panthers and bears. the wilderness needs your whole attention.

She heard pa shouting,"Jiminy crickets!It's raining fish-hooks and hammer handles!

The incurable optimism of the farmer who throws his seed on the ground every spring, betting it and his time against the elements, seemed inextricably to blend with the creed of her pioneer forefathers that "it is better farther on"-- only instead of farther on in space, it was farther on in time, over the horizon of the years ahead instead of the far horizon of the west.

Never bet your money on another man's game.

But in the east the sky was pale and through the gray woods came lanterns with wagons and horses, bringing Grandpa and Grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins.

It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.