ud and water for 50 feet around. Then back they go
again for another load six miles through the forest. Wet through, their
clothes hanging in ribbons from shoulders and belt, one day's mud caking
on another's, and with a long sword stuck through their belt in front,
they present a figure comical enough were it not that one knew the other
side of the picture.

Reeking with inherited consumption, they live the one life which is
certain to kill them before they are forty. Wet through and chilled,
they are called upon again and again to suddenly exert enormous
strength, since no man can desert his cart. He must "get there." He must
get out of his trouble. He eats largely when and how he can, and when he
has saved any money the merry "Taba" bone charms it from him in a way
too universal perhaps to call for any remark. Sometimes he finishes his
carting days through too decided opinions as to the other man's
integrity in playing "Taba"; sometimes on his canvas bed in a hut of mud
and branches, his browny yellow face and sunken eyes asking no pity,
betraying no emotion; in either case he is rarely over thirty-five and
often leaves a wife and children.

I say "wife and children," since it sounds the usual thing; but, as a
matter of strict fact, the ceremony of getting married is deprecated
among them, as it signifies "Putting on side," and is only resorted to
when they are in a village and there is a chance that the presents that
are given will more than compensate the tremendous expense they have to
go to. Speaking to a gentleman of this kidney, I was informed that when
the cross-eyed blacksmith Strike got married, it cost him three dollars
and a-half (say 5s.) in fire crackers alone, and my informant went on to
say that the only case he knew of where marriage had been really
successful was that of the fair-haired carpenter, who was married and
asked all the bosses on the place, who each gave something, with which
he was able to buy a sewing machine for the eldest girl, then aged six.

But, mark you, lest you should judge them lightly, remember that their
unwritten pact is just as binding to them as our formal marriage tie is
to us, and that in their way they are probably better husbands and
fathers than your Balham clerk. In their young days they may chop and
change, which changes are generally marked by little iron crosses in the
woods, but, once they have settled down, desertion is far rarer than in
civilised countries. I