Page:The Hope of the Great Community (1916).djvu/139

I dimly reflected that this sort of life had apparently been going on ever since men dwelt in that land. The logs and the grave looked old. The sunsets were beautiful. The wide prospects when one looked across the Sacramento Valley were impressive, and had long interested the people of whose love for my country I heard much. What was there then in this place that ought to be called new, or for that matter, crude? I wondered, and gradually came to feel that part of my life’s business was to find out what all this wonder meant. My earliest teachers in philosophy were my mother, whose private school, held for some years in our own house, I attended, and my sisters, who were all older than myself, and one of whom taught me to read. In my home I heard the Bible very frequently read, and very greatly enjoyed my mother’s reading of Bible stories, although, so far as I remember, I was very generally dissatisfied with the requirements of observance of Sundays, which stand out somewhat prominently in my memory. Our home