“What was behind such ardor? Rage of age? Life's revenge on the young? Or simply Aunt Eunice’s natural vinegar pickling her soul? In any case, something about me that Sunday had set her off. ‘I know you have your nose in the book all the time, but those are not the only lessons in store for you. When you get out in the world Paul Milliron, you'll see.’”

Paul’s early description of the acerbic and negative Aunt Eunice demonstrates the way his mind works. Rather than declaring that he knows her intentions, Paul engages in playful speculation that softens his rancor towards the old woman. Her prophecy, though delivered as a criticism, does not prove to be inaccurate. As Paul engages in Seizing All Opportunities for Education, he will find that not all knowledge comes from books.

“My condition, as I have gingerly explored it, is best called simply amnesia: protraction of recall. Dreams slide over into my memory, in a way that I am helpless to regulate; As well as I can describe it, my dream experiences become something like frescoes on the countless walls of the brain. […] But I never forget a dream. They stay with me like annals of the Arabian nights, except that mine now go far beyond a thousand and one.”

Paul describes one aspect of a personal issue that plagues him throughout: the persistence of troubling dreams that he invariably, permanently remembers upon waking. His dreams involve the individuals in his life in fantastic ways, presenting him with insolvable dilemmas and people performing unpredictable actions. At the same time, this inability to forget dreams makes him an unusually credible narrator of his waking life as well.

“[N]ow it has fallen to me to pronounce the fate of an entire species of schooling, the small prairie arks of education such as the one that was the making of me. […] I have been singled out—my office has been singled out—to deliver the word to teachers and school boards of the one room schools all across the state that there is no place for them in the age of Sputnik.”

The adult Paul muses on the task that lies before him, using hyperbolic language to communicate the stakes of his endeavor. By comparing the time of his childhood to the “age of Sputnik,” he establishes the contrast between the early and mid-20th centuries and marks the rapid pace of progress.