W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

etween the two schools, as I had turned down every one of them, none of the balance of our school having a
chance to take part in the competition. Then our teacher made capital of the matter by just telling them that he
had lots of scholars like the one he had tried. The old maxim, “It is better to learn a little well, than much
imperfectly,” is significantly true, and corroborates Romans 8:28: “All things work together for good to them
that love God with Divine love.” While my teachers were utterly incompetent to instruct me in anything but
rudimentary English branches, God made their incompetency a great blessing to me, by giving me time and
opportunity to learn these thoroughly, which are really the basis of an English education. The foundation of a
house is by far the most important part. In the prosecution of an English education, the spelling-book ought to
be committed to memory, and that followed by the dictionary, with careful and patient study. Rest assured that
these fundamentals are by far the most important. Deficiency in reading and writing has its remedy in mastering
the spelling-book.
English grammar and geography were not taught in the schools where I was reared. If a man (for there were no
women teachers) could take his students through the Single Rule of Three, he was pronounced all right; and if
he could teach through the Double Rule of Three, he as regarded extraordinary. When a little fellow, I got into
great trouble in the prosecution of my education for the want of competent teachers. My teacher would stall in
compound numbers and tell me his head was “wool gathered” and that he had to go off to the woods to be quiet
in order to work that sum.
Then giving me charge of the school, he would take his hat and go to the woods. Some of the scholars would
watch until he got off out of sight and keep watching for his reappearance and during his absence have a jolly
time, paying no attention to me, and I, finding that I could not keep them at their books to save my life, just
surrendered. After awhile he would come back and tell me that the sum had a wrong answer and I should just
skip it. But he stalled so much and pronounced so many of them wrong, that I just found he could not teach me,
and I thought I would return home and go to work on the farm.
Our land was not only poor, but covered by dense forests of oak (black, white and red, and hickory and
chestnut), while the dogwood, sassafras, black jack, and hazel bushes, brambles and briars literally crowded the
earth. Though I was but a little lad, as my growth was so slow, I was wonderfully hardy and active, so that the
neighbors confessed that I did more work than the stalwart youths all around me, who were twice my size.
While they had much more than the usual amount of physical strength, (for I was reared off in the hills among
the giants), I more than made up by rising early and keeping at it all day and losing no time. I wonder now how
it was possible for me to chop all day and never get tired. However, I piled all the brush as I went, cleaning up
the ground just ready for the fire, (as we burned on the ground all the stuff except the good rail timber which we
used in that way). I just lacked the physical ability to maul the rails to fence the ground, wherefore my parents
hired a stalwart to do that part, but I did everything else, and when we had the neighbors come in and pile up the
logs, I burned off the ground, then plowed and planted it. I used to clear from five to ten acres during a single
winter between the seasons of cultivation. As I had three older sisters, and my next younger brother was always
sickly, and could not help me, therefore I had all the work to do, as my father was generally out preaching or
working at the carpenter's trade, and very frequently too far off to return home at night. In the cropping season
he was generally at home. I cleaned up this brushy land, which required so much hard labor, and brought it into
cultivation, so that we had a good living at home and everything flourishing around us. I was utterly surprised
when, at the age of twenty-one, I came into the blue grass region to prosecute my education, and saw there
beautiful, rich, level fields, which are so productive to the hand of industry.
It was really fortunate for me, as mother and the children were dependent on me during those years, that I never
saw that beautiful country till after those years of toil, during which I had taken for them a productive farm out
of the thickets of black jack, dogwood, hazel bushes and saw briars. The land being encumbered with a vast
amount of large timber, it was hard to work, and the soil being light, it was soon exhausted and worn out. If I
had hitherto only seen the blue grass region, which gives Kentucky the reputation of an earthly paradise, and
that richly deserving, I do not see how I could have commanded the patience and perseverance necessary for
those arduous toils, in which I acquiesced not only patiently, but delightfully. Oh, how wonderfully God
worketh all things well to them who love Him and do His will! When I was a very small lad, about entering my
teens, a debating society sprang up in our neighborhood, discussing freely all subjects of general interest for