It IS hard. There's no saying it isn't; no, nor thinking what a fool,
what a blind, stupid, thundering idiot a fellow's been,
to laugh at the steady working life that would have helped him up,
bit by bit, to a good farm, a good wife, and innocent little kids about him,
like that chap, George Storefield, that came to see me last week.
He was real rightdown sorry for me, I could tell, though Jim and I
used to laugh at him, and call him a regular old crawler of a milker's calf
in the old days. The tears came into his eyes reg'lar like a woman
as he gave my hand a squeeze and turned his head away.
We was little chaps together, you know. A man always feels that, you know.
And old George, he'll go back -- a fifty-mile ride, but what's that
on a good horse? He'll be late home, but he can cross the rock ford
the short way over the creek. I can see him turn his horse loose
at the garden-gate, and walk through the quinces that lead up to the cottage,
with his saddle on his arm. Can't I see it all, as plain as if I was there?

And his wife and the young 'uns 'll run out when they hear father's horse,
and want to hear all the news. When he goes in there's his meal
tidy and decent waiting for him, while he tells them about
the poor chap he's been to see as is to be scragged next month.
Ha! ha! what a rum joke it is, isn't it?

And then he'll go out in the verandah, with the roses growin'
all over the posts and smellin' sweet in the cool night air. After that
he'll have his smoke, and sit there thinkin' about me, perhaps, and old days,
and what not, till all hours -- till his wife comes and fetches him in.
And here I lie -- my God! why didn't they knock me on the head
when I was born, like a lamb in a dry season, or a blind puppy --
blind enough, God knows! They do so in some countries, if the books say true,
and what a hell of misery that must save some people from!