nd used to
outspan for five or six hours in the heat of the day to rest. I planned
that I would lie under a wagon and read for an hour or two every day
before I went to sleep, and I did for the first two or three; but after
that I only wanted to sleep, like the rest, and I packed my books away.

"When you have three wagons to look after all night, you are sometimes
so tired you can hardly stand. At first when I walked along driving
my wagons in the night it was glorious; the stars had never looked so
beautiful to me; and on the dark nights when we rode through the bush
there were will-o'-the-wisps dancing on each side of the road. I found
out that even the damp and dark are beautiful. But I soon changed, and
saw nothing but the road and my oxen. I only wished for a smooth piece
of road, so that I might sit at the front and doze. At the places where
we outspanned there were sometimes rare plants and flowers, the festoons
hanging from the bush-trees, and nuts and insects, such as we never see
here; but after a little while I never looked at them--I was too tired.

"I ate as much as I could, and then lay down on my face under the wagon
till the boy came to wake me to inspan, and then we drove on again all
night; so it went, so it went. I think sometimes when I walked by my
oxen I called to them in my sleep, for I know I thought of nothing; I
was like an animal. My body was strong and well to work, but my brain
was dead. If you have not felt it, Lyndall, you cannot understand it.
You may work, and work, and work, till you are only a body, not a
soul. Now, when I see one of those evil-looking men that come from
Europe--navvies, with the beast-like, sunken face, different from any
Kaffer's--I know what brought that look into their eyes; and if I
have only one inch of tobacco I give them half. It is work, grinding,
mechanical work, that they or their ancestors have done, that has made
them into beasts. You may work a man's body so that his soul dies. Work
is good. I have worked at the old farm from the sun's rising till its
setting, but I have had time to think, and time to feel. You may work a
man so that all but the animal in him is gone; and that grows stronger
with physical labour.

"You may work a man till he is a devil. I know it, because I have felt
it. You will never understand the change that came over me. No one but I
will ever know how great it was. But I was never miserable; when I could
keep my oxen from stickin