Keepsie was a brave-hearted boy. He could have died, but he strove to live and now he was as well as ever. He could play around as spry as any of the other children, hopping like a sparrow, doing almost anything the others could do until he decided to go to that free school.
Mary didn't want him to go. She had never learned to read. There were no printed words in the Quarters except in Brer Dee's Bible and on the newspapers pasted on the house walls to hinder the wind from gushing too fast through the cracks. The same white people who made that hay-press made newspapers and books. Such things were dangerous. Keepsie ought not to tamper with them. Who could tell what book-reading might do to him.
Spoken words are safer. If Keepsie would keep his ears open he could hear plenty of good wise talk. Spoken words can cut and sting and beat down almost any enemy. They can bring tears or make people split their sides with laughter. Instead of reading all the time out of books and papers covered with printed words, he would do better to learn how to read other things: sunrises, moons, sunsets, clouds and stars, faces and eyes. Everything has its way of speaking and telling things worth knowing. Even the little grass-blades have their way of saying things
