His voice had a tremor in it, as if a very little encouragement would bring tears.
“Yes,” said the other, “it is hard. I've been there. I had a girl six years old that was to me all yours is to you, and all she ever can be. I started off one Monday morning leaving her as happy as a lark. On Wednesday I was telegraphed to come in, and when I got home Thursday morning she didn't know me. Just as long as she could speak she kept asking for me. I never start out on a Monday morning but that I think of her, and I never walk toward the house Saturday night that I do not miss her. I don't know, but it seems to me that a traveling man has no business to have a wife and family.”
“I never knew you had lost a child,” said the other; “if I should lose my baby I believe I would go insane.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn't; you would do just as every one else does; you'd go on and suffer. But the men that can be with their families seven days in the week ought to thank their God every hour of the day.”
“I travel a good deal by team,” said a third, “and am frequently driving as late as 10 or 11 o'clock at night. As I go along the road and see the light shining out of the windows, and see family groups in their homes, gathered around the lamp, I tell you, boys, I get homesick. It's the time of day I want to be at home with my family. I envy every man I see in such a home, and I contrast his condition, surrounded with his wife and children, and a long night of rest before him, with my work. I finish up my day at a late hour at night, then perhaps have to get up at an unearthly hour in the morning to catch a train. There's mighty little poetry in this kind of a life.”
“But, after all,” said the first speaker, “our wives suffer the most. They have the responsibility of the home and children on their shoulders all the time, and they worry more or less over us. My wife never sees a boy coming to the door with a circular but she thinks he has a dispatch saying I am either maimed or killed in a railroad accident. Then if the children are sick she has to shoulder the burden alone, and it is all the greater because she always tortures herself by believing that she must be in some way to blame. I tell you our wives have the hardest part to bear.”
“That's so,” came from several.