And I
have seen new things which are also true.
My friend is a drunkard--at least so I call him, following the custom of
the country. On his way from town he used often to come by my farm. I
could hear him singing afar off. Beginning at the bridge, where on still
days one can hear the rattle of a wagon on the loose boards, he sang in
a peculiar clear high voice. I make no further comment upon the singing,
nor the cause of it; but in the cool of the evening when the air was
still--and he usually came in the evening--I often heard the cadences of
his song with a thrill of pleasure. Then I saw him come driving by my
farm, sitting on the spring seat of his one-horse wagon, and if he
chanced to see me in my field, he would take off his hat and make me a
grandiloquent bow, but never for a moment stop his singing. And so he
passed by the house and I, with a smile, saw him moving up the hill in
the north road, until finally his voice, still singing, died away in the
distance.
Once I happened to reach the house just as the singer was passing, and
Harriet said:
"There goes that drunkard."
It gave me an indescribable shock. Of course I had known as much, and
yet I had not directly applied the term.
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