n continued:

"It's a curious thing, Mister--perhaps you've noticed it yourself--that
the best things of all in the world people won't have as a gift."

"I've noticed it," I said.

"It's strange, isn't it?" he again remarked.

"Very strange," I said.

"I don't know's I can blame them," he continued. "I was that way myself
for a good many years: all around me gold and diamonds and precious
jewels, and me never once seeing them. All I had to do was to stoop and
take them--but I didn't do it."

I saw that I had met a philosopher, and I decided that I would stop and
wrestle with him and not let him go without his story--something like
Jacob, wasn't it, with the angel?

"Do you do all this without payment?"

He looked at me in an injured way.

"Who'd pay me?" he asked. "Mostly people think me a sort of fool. Oh, I
know, but I don't mind. I live by the Word. No, nobody pays me: I am
paying myself."

By this time he was ready to start. So I said, "Friend, I'm going your
way, and I'll walk with you."

So we set off together down the hill.

"You see, sir," he said, "when a man has got the best thing in the
world, and finds it's free, he naturally wants to let other people know
about it."

He walked with the unmistakable step of those who knew the long road--an
easy, swinging, steady step--carrying his small black bag. So I
gradually drew him out, and when I had his whole story it was as simple
and common, but as wonderful, as daylight: as fundamental as a tree or a
rock.

"You see, Mister," he said, "I was a wild sort when I was young. The
drink, and worse. I hear folks say sometimes that if they'd known what
was right they'd have done it. But I think that conscience never stops
ringing little bells in the back of a man's head; and that if he doesn't
do what is right, it's because he _wants_ to do what is wrong. He thinks
it's more amusing and interesting. I went through all that, Mister, and
plenty more besides. I got pretty nearly as low as a man ever gets. Oh,
I was down and out: no home, no family, not a friend that wanted to see
me. If you never got down that low, Mister, you don't know what it is.
You are just as much dead as if you were in your grave. I'm telling you.

"I thought there was no help for me, and I don't know's I wanted to be
helped. I said to myself, 'You're just naturally born weak and it isn't
your fault,' It makes a lot of men easier in their minds to lay up their
troubles to the way t