The day arrives, the
agent or the land-steward looks over the proposals, and after singling
out the highest, bidder, declares him tenant, as a matter of course.
Now, perhaps, this said tenant does not possess a shilling in the
world, nor a shilling's worth. Most likely he is a new-married man,
with nothing but his wife's bed and bedding, his wedding-suit, and his
blackthorn cudgel, which we may suppose him to keep in reserve for the
bailiff. However, he commences his farm; and then follow the shiftings,
the scramblings, and the fruitless struggles to succeed, where success
is impossible. His farm is not half tilled; his crops are miserable; the
gale-day has already passed; yet, he can pay nothing until he takes it
out of the land. Perhaps he runs away--makes a moonlight flitting--and,
by the aid of his friends, succeeds in bringing the crop with him. The
landlord, or agent, declares he is a knave; forgetting that the man
had no other alternative, and that they were the greater knaves and
fools too, for encouraging him to undertake a task that was beyond his
strength.
In calamity we are anxious to derive support from the sympathy of our
friends; in our success, we are eager to communicate to them the power
of participating in our happiness. When Owen once more found himself
independent and safe, he longed to realize two plans on which he had
for some time before been seriously thinking.
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