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Updated: June 10, 2025
There are the pure: there are the kind: there are the gentle. There are sweet unspoken thanks before a fair scene of nature: at a sun-setting below a glorious sea: or a moon and a host of stars shining over it: at a bunch of children playing in the street, or a group of flowers by the hedge-side, or a bird singing there.
I turned from his door, with a few shillings that he himself thrust into my hand, and walked on I cared not whither out of the town, into the fields till night came; and then, just as I suddenly entered on the high-road, many miles away, the moon rose; and I saw, by the hedge-side, something that seemed like a corpse; it was an old beggar, in the last state of raggedness, disease, and famine.
But there were other and far more painful sights on the road, which could not fail to attract attention. For the first half-mile, almost at every hundred yards might be seen some sick man, who, unable to proceed further, had fallen against the hedge-side, and exhibited his sores to move the pity of the passers-by. But these supplications were wholly unheeded.
Such a scent came up from the freshened earth; and bright and golden green looked every leaf, washed clear of the dust that had rested upon it a day or two before; while the hedge-side flowers, although nodding with the watery weight they bore, had turned their opening petals to the sun, and seemed to laugh out their welcome to his warm bright beams.
Twice only have I deliberately tried to run down, to tread on coat-tails so to speak, of any wild creature. One was a weasel, the other a stoat, running along at a hedge-side before me. In both instances, just as the front wheel was touching the tail, the little flat-headed rascal swerved quickly aside and escaped.
I turned from his door, with a few shillings that he himself thrust into my hand, and walked on I cared not whither out of the town, into the fields till night came; and then, just as I suddenly entered on the high-road, many miles away, the moon rose; and I saw, by the hedge-side, something that seemed like a corpse; it was an old beggar, in the last state of raggedness, disease, and famine.
Indeed, it was a matter of a braxy ewe, and the poor beast lay at the hedge-side and the blood clotting at her throat, for Dan had bled her, and the briars o' many a brake trailed behind her. "Braxy and oatmeal, Hamish," says he, "there's many a lusty lad reared on worse; but we'll be hivin' tatties and herrin' for a change, and plenty o' sour milk tae slocken the drouth o' it."
Over the hills and far away, with voice cleared by sucking the little birds' eggs, and crying "Cuckoo," till the far-off woods rang back the echo from their golden green sides; and still on and on flew the sweet-voiced bird, crying that summer had come again with its hedge-side flowers and sweet-scented gales, bonny meadows, golden with the glossy buttercups, while nodding cowslips peeped from their verdant beds.
"I could not help it, Patience," he said, "we couldn't leave the poor fatherless child out on the hedge-side." "No," said Patience, "we can't but have her, as the gentleman said, for the love of God. He has taken care of us, so we ought to take care of the fatherless like ourselves." "That's right, Patience," said Steadfast, much relieved in his mind, "and see here!"
They crept close to the hedge-side to shelter themselves from the clouds of dust, which the sudden gusts of east wind blew in their faces. They had walked many miles, and the boy limped painfully. He often looked up anxiously into his mother's face, and asked if they had much farther to go?
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