There's no great loss without some small gain.

The enormous lake stretched flat and smooth and white all the way to the edge of the gray sky. Wagon tracks went away across it, so far that you could not see where they went; they ended in nothing at all.

We must get rid of the habit of classing all women together politically and thinking of the 'woman's vote' as one and indivisible.

So they all went away from the little log house. The shutters were over the windows, so the little house could not see them go. It stayed there inside the log fence, behind the two big oak trees that in the summertime had made green roofs for Mary and Laura to play under.

As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that things truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. It is not the things you have that make you happy. It is love and kindness and helping each other and just plain being good.

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.

And just as a little thread of gold, running through a fabric, brightens the whole garment, so women's work at home, while only the doing of little things, like the golden gleam of sunlight runs through and brightens all the fabric of civilization.