““your old grandfather, you know, who died before you were born—he used to say to me, ‘Learn all you can, John, about anything and everything. There is no telling when a chance may pop up for you to use what you thought you never would use.’ It’s a good rule. I practiced on it once when I saw a man making a wagon. I watched just how he fixed the wheel and the holes for the nails, and everything, and I said, right out loud, ‘It isn’t anyways likely that I shall ever make a wagon, but then I might as well know how to do it. And it wasn’t a week after that we broke down going across the prairie, your mother and me and two children; and if I hadn’t known just how to fix that wheel we would have frozen to death likely enough before we could get anywhere.””
