Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Title: Little Town on the Prairie.
Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Genre: Literature, autobiographical, Western, family saga, children's lit, YA, bildungsroman, poetry, romance.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: November 20, 1941.
Summary: The little settlement that weathered the long, hard winter of 1880-81 is now a growing town. Laura is growing up, and she goes to her first evening social, and gets her first job. Mary is at last able to go to a college for the blind. Best of all, Almanzo Wilder asks permission to walk home from church with Laura. And Laura, now 15-years-old, receives her certificate to teach school.
My rating: 7.5/10.
♥ She said, “Oh no, you’re not like that, not really. You are good.”
“We are all desperately wicked and inclined to evil as the sparks fly upwards,” said Mary, using the Bible words. “But that doesn’t matter.”
“What!” cried Laura.
“I mean I don’t believe we ought to think so much about ourselves, about whether we are bad or good,” Mary explained.
“But, my goodness! How can anybody be good without thinking about it?” Laura demanded.
“I don’t know, I guess we couldn’t,” Mary admitted. “I don’t know how to say what I mean very well. But - it isn’t so much thinking, as - as just knowing. Just being sure of the goodness of God.”
Laura stood still, and so did Mary, because she dared not step without Laura’s arm in hers guiding her. There Mary stood in the midst of the green and flowery miles of grass rippling in the wind, under the great blue sky and white clouds sailing, and she could not see. Everyone knows that God is good. But it seemed to Laura then that Mary must be sure of it in some special way.
♥ The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America’s king.
She thought: Americans won’t obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn’t anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.
Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means, you have to be good. “Our father’s God, author of liberty - ” The laws of Nature and of Nature’s God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God’s law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free.
♥ If wisdom’s way you wisely seek,
Five things observe with care,
To whom you speak,
Of whom you speak,
And how, and when and where.
♥ In memory’s golden casket,
Drop one pearl for me.
♥ When the name that I write here
Is dim on the page
And the leaves of your album
Are yellow with age,
Still think of me kindly
And do not forget
That wherever I am
I remember you yet.