Bokelskere.no

’Name chapter and verse: in which of the holy books do you find language to support you?’ ’Book!’ repeated Hawk-eye, with singular and ill-concealed disdain; ‘do you take me for a whimpering boy, at the apron-string of one of your old gals; and this good rifle on my knee for the feather of a goose’s wing, my ox’s horn for a bottle of ink, and my leathern pouch for a cross-barred handkercher to carry my dinner? Book! What have such as I, who am a warrior of the wilderness though a man without a cross, to do with books? I never read but in one, and the words that are written there are too simple and too plain to need much schooling; though I may boast that of forty long and hardworking years.’
‘What call you the volume?’ said David, misconceiving the other’s meaning.
‘ ̕ Tis open before your eyes’, returned the scout, ‘and he who owns it is not a niggard of its use. I have heard it said that there are men who read in books to convince themselves there is a God. I know not but man may so deform His works in the settlements as to leave that which is so clear in the wilderness a matter of doubt among traders and priests. If any such there be, and he will follow me from sun to sun, through the windings of the forest, hes hall see enough to teach him that he is a fool, and that the greatest of his folly lies in striving to rise to the level of one he can never equal, be it in goodness or be it in power.’