"Now I've learned _O_," she remarked, "I'd like to learn another."
"The other one looks more like an eye," she observed critically.
"So it does, so it does!" Amberley admitted, much impressed by the discovery. "But then it's an _O_ all the same, and this one is an _I_."
"Yes; well, I've learned that. Now, make another."
Thus unheralded and unawares come the great moments of life. When little Eliza mounted that wooden settle, her mind was innocent of artificial accomplishments; before she again stood on her round fat legs, she had begun the ascent of that path which leads away up to the heights of human knowledge. It is a long ascent and few accomplish it, but the first essential steps had been taken: little Eliza had become a _Scholar_!
Not only had she learned to recognize an _O_ and an _I_, an _S_, an _M_, and an _N_, but she had laboriously made each one of them with her own hand. And, furthermore, she had seen them combined in a wonderful group which, if her teacher was to be credited, stood for _Simon_! It was better than drawing, infinitely better! Anybody could make a round thing with four crooked legs and a thin tail, and call it a calf--but only a scholar could put five letters together and make them stand for a man and a calf beside; a man with a kind voice and a big beard, and a calf that would lick a person's hand! Oh, but life had grown a wonderful thing to little Eliza, when she trotted down the hillside, clinging to the fingers of her new friend, and holding the sturdy little daisy in the other sturdy little hand.
And life had grown even more wonderful to Simon Amberley. He had not passed such a pleasant day since he could remember, and he had certainly never in his life had so much to look forward to; for had not Eliza promised to come again the next day, and to bring Bella Jones with her?
He went into the cabin after his chores were done, and pulled out an old cowhide trunk with the hair pretty well worn off it, and there, inside, he found the battered family Bible which had been sent out, at his request, when his mother died; and a copy of Shakespeare's _Plays_ in one volume which he had got as a prize at school. There, too, were Miss Edgeworth's _Rosamond_, and Nathaniel P. Willis' _Poems_, and one volume of Dr. Kane's _Explorations at the North Pole_. "Quite a library," he said to himself, with conscious pride. He had not read in a book for twenty years; not since the time, back in Ohio, when he had bought Scott's complete Works at auction, and had to sell them again to pay his way to Missouri, whither he had gone in obedience to that mysterious prompting of the setting sun.