I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet.  This was my first gain from my illness.  How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me.

Name, Jo.  Nothing else that he knows on.  Don't know that everybody has two names.  Never heerd of sich a think.  Don't know that Jo is short for a longer name.  Thinks it long enough for HIM.  HE don't find no fault with it.  Spell it?  No.  HE can't spell it.  No father, no mother, no friends.  Never been to school.  What's home?  Knows a broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to tell a lie.  Don't recollect who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both.  Can't exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it'll be something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right—and so he'll tell the truth.

"We thought that, perhaps," said I, hesitating, "it is right to begin with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted for them."

But the truth is, brother, I am a—I am a kind of a weed, and it's too late to plant me in a regular garden.