Roberta!
Four of you slogged through to the very, very end, and from those four, a winner was randomly chosen. Congratulations to all of you who made it!
Roberta, you now need to contact me privately at alauters[at]yahoo[dot]com so that I can send you your book.
If you’d like to continue the game vote “yes” or “no” in the comments below. I see Tish already has an opinion!
You all are truly Laura-lovers. You’ve memorized the books and cite chapter and verse when it comes to even the most obscure quotes. It also looks like you had fun participating over the past two weeks.
I’ll release the comments from Quote #12 tomorrow, and announce the winner of an autographed copy of “More than a Farmer’s Wife” at that point.
Comments I’d like to see now? Would you like to continue the game, just for fun?
One day when Pa was hunting, two Indians came. They came into the house, because Jack was chained.
Those Indians were dirty and scowling and mean. They acted as if the house belonged to them. One of them looked through Ma’s cupboard and took all the cornbread. The other took Pa’s tobacco-pouch. They looked at the pegs where Pa’s gun belonged. Then one of them picked up the bundle of furs.
Ma held Baby Carrie in her arms, and Mary and Laura stood close to her. They looked at that Indian taking Pa’s furs. They couldn’t do anything to stop him.
He carried them as far as the door. Then the other Indian said something to him. They made harsh sounds at each other in their throats, and he dropped the furs. They went away.
Ma sat down. She hugged Mary and Laura close to her and Laura felt Ma’s heart beating.
“Well,” Ma said, smiling, “I’m thankful they didn’t take the plow and seeds.”
Laura was surprised. She asked, “What plow?”
“The plow and all our seeds for next year are in that bundle of furs,” said Ma.
~Laura Ingalls Wilder, in Little House on the Prairie, Chapter 18
I have a confession to make. When I was a little girl reading this passage, I took Ma very literally. I thought the plow and seeds were actually hidden within the bundle of furs.
I know it’s not at all logical. I even suspected that it wasn’t. “But didn’t that Indian think those furs were awfully heavy?” I would think. “It’s lucky that part of the plow didn’t stick out when he picked up the bundle. How could that Indian not have known that something big and bulky was in those furs!?”
If it was a passing thought, it might not be so shameful, but I was well into my late teen years before the real meaning of Ma’s statement hit me. And then, how I laughed! And immediately picked up the phone to call my Little House friend to tell her how silly I’d been all these years.
“I always thought the same thing!” she exclaimed. And when I told my mother? “I remember thinking that when I was little too,” she admitted.
Surely we aren’t the only ones. And this can’t be the only passage whose meaning has been mistaken!
So it’s your turn. Any stories to share of how you, or someone you know, has misinterpreted a line in a Little House book, with hilarious results? Please share with us!
You all have through Monday to post your answers, and I’ll make this one easy:
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“It can never be a long time ago.”
Just two quotes to go! Here’s today’s:
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“Then the sun went down, far away in the west, and it was time to make the camp ready for night.”
“From the grassy swell where she picketed Ellen she could see the town beyond to the north. Big Slough curved between and spread wide southwest, covering acres upon acres with its rough high grass.”
We briefly interrupt talk of all things Little House to take care of some blog business. Due to excessive amounts of spam left in the comments section on this blog in recent weeks (by robots, not real people), we are now forced to require all you real people who have real things to say to register and be logged in to leave comments in the future.
Until the quote contest is finished, all comments will continue to be held in the queue until approved by an administrator, but after that time, any comment left by a registered user will automatically appear and will not have to await approval.
We apologize for any added hassle this causes you and hope that you will understand. Because, you see, if we spend all of our time deleting the hundreds of spam comments that come in every day, we will have no time to talk Little House with you… so this change benefits you as well as us.
Thank you for your understanding and participation. We hope this won’t cause anyone to refrain from commenting in the future.
“Ma sat by the lamp, mending one of Pa’s shirts. The house seemed cold and still and strange, without Pa.”
“They had nothing but the clothes they wore, and one quilt that his wife had snatched to wrap around the baby in the cellar.”
“It was nice, walking together. To take care of their shoes, they did not walk in the dusty wheel tracks. They walked on the harder strip in the middle where only horses’ hoofs had discouraged the grass.”
