"And for my part, hit was my wish not only to help a leetle with the land, but to furnish the timber for the houses; for though I am lacking in money, across yander in my hills is a sight of the finest yallow poplars the old earth ever brung forth. And when I spoke that, hit was on the lips of nigh every man present to offer his labor to cut the timber, or snake down the logs, or hew and notch 'em, or to raise the houses, or rive the boards for the roof; so you might say the buildings hain't aiming to cost no great. "And this hain't quite all. If my land yander across Troublesome had been right land for a school, I would have give hit outright for the purpose that is most nighest my heart. But you can all see what hit is--I have deeded off passel atter passel to my offsprings as they married, till what is left is nigh straight up and down, and hain't got even a good house-seat left on hit. But I now offer to deed every foot I got left to the women, to use soon as I am dead and gone, which naturely can't be long, axing them only to let me and my old woman stay on hit till then, and have the use of the cleared land to raise corn for us and our property. All the timber and the coal to be theirn from the start, which both'll be enough to last 'em fifty year, even if the school grows like I hope hit will. "For this is my idee, friends--that not only the young-uns in this town is to have the benefits, but that some way may be thought up so all the sprightly, ambitious-minded boys and gals in the county will get a chance at the bread of knowledge. When I let my mind run out over these mountains, and think of the dozens of young-uns up nigh every hollow, and the scores up every branch, and the hunderds--thousands, sometimes, if hit is a long one--along every creek, all with just as good, bright, hungry minds as anybody's childern on earth, and all starved of their rights, half, maybe, being beyand the reach of any school, and them that goes to district school housed, maybe, worse than cattle, with the chinking all out of the walls, and the boards rotted on the roofs, and the rain a-pouring and the wind a-blowing through, and the teacher, likely, a wild boy that hain't got neither larning nor manners--why hit stirs my soul so I hain't hardly able to hold myself under.