Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography

56. They all flew away into the west. At this point in the novel Pa delivers this haunting line, 'I would like some one to tell me how they all knew at once that it was time to go, and how they knew which way was west and their ancestral home." Prof. Lockwood commented, 'Locusts were then-- and still are-- mysterious creatures, whose sudden, irruptions are their defining attribute.

Ambition is, like other good things[.] a good only when use in moderation. It has worked great good for the world, and great evil also. [Ale]xander is an example of a man completely carried away by ambition: so much so that when he had conquered the whole world (which one would suppose was enough to satisfy ambition); he wept because there were no more world to conquer. Ambition is a good servant, but a hard master; and if you think it is likely to become your master: I would say to you in the words of the immortals Shakespeare: 'Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition, by that sin fell the angels.

Wilder wrote, 'The roses scented the wind, and along the road the fresh blossoms, with their new petals and golden centers, looked up like little faces.

I have learned that if the mind is allowed to dwell on a circumstance more and more details will present themselves and the memory becomes much more distinct.

For some reason, there was a scare about the Catholics getting control of the government and the awful things they would do to protestants. The daughter would wring her hands and pace the floor declaring that the Catholics should never take her Bible away from her. Then a comet appeared in the sky and both women thought it meant the end of the world and were more frightened than ever. But I couldn’t see how I could be afraid of both comet and Catholics at the same time so I worried about neither.

Howard Ensign had joined the Congregational church after their revival and would testify at prayer meeting every Wednesday night. It seemed to me that the things between one and God should be between him and God like loving ones mother. One didn't go around saying, 'I love my mother, she has been so good to me.' One just loved her and did things that she liked one to do.