Ruffner were as
valuable to me as any education I have ever gotten anywhere else.
Even to this day I never see bits of paper scattered around a house or
in the street that I do not want to pick them up at once. I never see
a filthy yard that I do not want to clean it, a paling off of a fence
that I do not want to put it on, an unpainted or unwhitewashed house
that I do not want to pain or whitewash it, or a button off one's
clothes, or a grease-spot on them or on a floor, that I do not want to
call attention to it.
From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look upon her as one
of my best friends. When she found that she could trust me she did so
implicitly. During the one or two winters that I was with her she
gave me an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a
portion of the winter months, but most of my studying was done at
night, sometimes alone, sometimes under some one whom I could hire to
teach me. Mrs. Ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in
all my efforts to get an education. It was while living with her that
I began to get together my first library. I secured a dry-goods box,
knocked out one side of it, put some shelves in it, and began putting
into it every kind of book that I could get my hands upon, and called
it my "library.
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