Another Aged Man Came Once A Week
Regularly; White As The Snow Through Which He Walked.
In summer he
worked; since the winter began he had had no employment, but supported
himself by going round to the farms in rotation.
They all gave him a
trifle - bread and cheese, a penny, a slice of meat - something; and so he
lived, and slept the whole of that time in outhouses wherever he could.
He had no home of any kind. Why did he not go into the workhouse? 'I be
afeared if I goes in there they'll put me with the rough uns, and very
likely I should get some of my clothes stole.' Rather than go into the
workhouse he would totter round in the face of the blasts that might
cover his weak old limbs with drift. There was a sense of dignity and
manhood left still; his clothes were worn, but clean and decent; he was
no companion of rogues; the snow and frost, the straw of the outhouses,
was better than that. He was struggling against age, against nature,
against circumstance; the entire weight of society, law, and order
pressed upon him to force him to lose his self-respect and liberty. He
would rather risk his life in the snowdrift. Nature, earth, and the gods
did not help him; sun and stars, where were they? He knocked at the doors
of the farms and found good in man only - not in Law or Order, but in
individual man alone.
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