Oh the places....

Dr. Seuss, I believe said it best, "Oh the Places You Can Go". I came across a great passage in The Russians series by Michael Phillips and Judith Pella. Book 1, The Crown and the Crucible, tells the story of a poor peasant girl who is leaving her small village to go to St. Petersburg, Russia. I love her description of how the few books she has had the opportunity to read (which she read over and over and over) have given her a glimpse into a world she otherwise would have had no idea about.

Anna knew more of the outside world than did most of the sixty inhabitants of Katyk. Even though such knowledge came from the pages of romantic books, she knew there were splendors as well as evils to be encountered. Even if from fairy tales, she knew something of the scope of human nature. She realized there were good people and evil. She knew there were choices to be made that would determine her future. She had an idea that a girl's heart, mind, and spirit might be stretched to the very limits.

...In her own small way, Anna felt like a knight in one of the ancient stories, leaving home for distant lands to seek out a dragon in some unknown corner of the empire, thus to prove her mettle and fulfill her destiny.