tch in his head--he's proud then, the proudest
boy in the district.

I wasn't a healthy-minded, average boy: I reckon I was born for a poet
by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn't know what was the
matter with me--or the world--but that's got nothing to do with it.

There are times when a man is happy. When he finds out that the girl
loves him. When he's just married. When he's a lawful father for the
first time, and everything is going on all right: some men make fools
of themselves then--I know I did. I'm happy to-night because I'm out of
debt and can see clear ahead, and because I haven't been easy for a long
time.

But I think that the happiest time in a man's life is when he's courting
a girl and finds out for sure that she loves him and hasn't a thought
for any one else. Make the most of your courting days, you young chaps,
and keep them clean, for they're about the only days when there's a
chance of poetry and beauty coming into this life. Make the best of them
and you'll never regret it the longest day you live. They're the days
that the wife will look back to, anyway, in the brightest of times as
well as in the blackest, and there shouldn't be anything in those days
that might hurt her when she looks back. Make the most of your courting
days, you young chaps, for they will never come again.

A married man knows all about it--after a while: he sees the woman world
through the eyes of his wife; he knows what an extra moment's pressure
of the hand means, and, if he has had a hard life, and is inclined to be
cynical, the knowledge does him no good. It leads him into awful messes
sometimes, for a married man, if he's inclined that way, has three times
the chance with a woman that a single man has--because the married man
knows. He is privileged; he can guess pretty closely what a woman means
when she says something else; he knows just how far he can go; he can go
farther in five minutes towards coming to the point with a woman than an
innocent young man dares go in three weeks. Above all, the married man
is more decided with women; he takes them and things for granted. In
short he is--well, he is a married man. And, when he knows all this, how
much better or happier is he for it? Mark Twain says that he lost all
the beauty of the river when he saw it with a pilot's eye,--and there
you have it.

But it's all new to a young chap, provided he hasn't been a young
blackguard. It's all wonderful, new, and