he's proud then, the proudest boy in the district.

I wasn't a healthy-minded, average boy: I reckon I was born for a poet
by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn't know what was the matter
with me -- or the world -- but that's got nothing to do with it.

There are times when a man is happy. When he finds out
that the girl loves him. When he's just married. When he's a lawful father
for the first time, and everything is going on all right:
some men make fools of themselves then -- I know I did.
I'm happy to-night because I'm out of debt and can see clear ahead,
and because I haven't been easy for a long time.

But I think that the happiest time in a man's life is when
he's courting a girl and finds out for sure that she loves him
and hasn't a thought for any one else. Make the most of your courting days,
you young chaps, and keep them clean, for they're about the only days
when there's a chance of poetry and beauty coming into this life.
Make the best of them and you'll never regret it the longest day you live.
They're the days that the wife will look back to, anyway,
in the brightest of times as well as in the blackest,
and there shouldn't be anything in those days that might hurt her
when she looks back. Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps,
for they will never come again.

A married man knows all about it -- after a while: he sees the woman world
through the eyes of his wife; he knows what an extra moment's
pressure of the hand means, and, if he has had a hard life,
and is inclined to be cynical, the knowledge does him no good.
It leads him into awful messes sometimes, for a married man,