But handsome is that handsome does, and he is well to do:
’Twould ease my mind if I could say the same of Jesse, too.
’Tis like my time is nearly out; of that I’m not afraid;
I never cheated any man, and all my debts are paid.
They call it rest that we shall have, but work would do no harm;
There can’t be rivers there, and fields, without some sort o’ farm.”
No description in prose can as well describe his occupation as a boy, as his own lines, in the poem of the “Holly Tree.”
“The corn was warm in the ground, the fences were mended and made,
And the garden-beds, as smooth as a counterpane is laid,
Were dotted and striped with green, where the peas and the radishes grew,