“That you sell your daughters into slavery,” said the Bishop quietly.
“You don't seem to think it hurts your's,” said Conway bluntly.
“If I had my way they'd not work there a day,”—the old man replied hastily. “But it's different with me, an' you know it. My people take to it naturally. I am a po' white, an underling by breedin' an' birth, an' if my people build, they must build up. But you—you are tearing down when you do that. Po' as I am, I'd rather starve than to see little children worked to death in that trap, but Tabitha sees it different, and she is the one bein' in the world I don't cross—the General”—he smiled—“she don't understand, she's built different.”
He was silent a while. Then he said: “I am old an' have nothin'.”
He stopped again. He did not say that what little he did have went to the poor and the sorrow-stricken of the neighborhood. He did not add that in his home, besides its poverty and hardness, he faced daily the problem of far greater things.
“If I only had my health,” said Conway, “but this cursed rheumatism!”
“Some of us has been so used to benefits,” said the old man, “that it's only when they've withdrawn that we miss 'em. We're always ready to blame God for what we lose, but fail to remember what He gives us. We kno' what diseases an' misfortunes we have had, we never know, by God's mercy, what we have escaped. Death is around us daily—in the very air we breathe—and yet we live.
“I'll talk square with you, Ned—though you may hate me for it. Every misfortune you have, from rheumatism to loss of property, is due to whiskey. Let it alone. Be a man. There's greatness in you yet. You'd have no chance if you was a scrub. But no man can estimate the value of good blood in man or hoss—it's the unknown quantity that makes him ready to come again. For do the best we can, at last we're in the hands of God an' our pedigree.”
“Do you think I've got a show yet?” asked Conway, looking up.
“Do I? Every man has a chance who trusts God an' prays. You can't down that man. Your people were men—brave an' honest men. They conquered themselves first, an' all this fair valley afterwards. They overcame greater obstacles than you ever had, an' in bringin' you into the world they gave you, by the very laws of heredity, the power to overcome, too. Why do you grasp at the shadow an' shy at the form? You keep these hound dogs here, because your father rode to hounds. But he rode for pleasure, in the lap of plenty, that he had made by hard licks. You ride, from habit, in poverty. He rode his hobbies—it was all right. Your hobbies ride you. He fought chickens for an hour's pastime, in the fullness of the red blood of life. You fight them for the blood of the thing—as the bred-out Spaniards fight bulls. He took his cocktails as a gentleman—you as a drunkard.”