life has been harder for me than a harder life might be for another
man who was different. That much I know. There is one thing I've got
to be thankful for. I haven't been the means of sending any more slaves
into this world. I am glad my wife and I haven't any children to ask
'why?'

"Now, I've begun at the beginning; I'm going on. I have never had
what men call luck. My folks were poor; father and mother were good,
hardworking people, but they had nothing but trouble, sickness, and
death, and losses by fire and flood. We lived near the river, and one
spring our house went, and every stick we owned, and much as ever we
all got out alive. Then lightning struck father's new house, and the
insurance company had failed, and we never got a dollar of insurance.
Then my oldest brother died, just when he was getting started in
business, and his widow and two little children came on father to
support. Then father got rheumatism, and was all twisted, and wasn't
good for much afterward; and my sister Sarah, who had been expecting to
get married, had to give it up and take in sewing and stay at home and
take care of the rest. There was father and George's widow--she was
never good for much at work--and mother and Abby. She was my youngest
sister. As for me, I had a liking for books and wanted to get an
education; might just as well have wanted to get a seat on a throne. I
went to work in the grist-mill of the place where we used to live when I
was only a boy. Then, before I was twenty, I saw that Sarah wasn't going
to hold out. She had grieved a good deal, poor thing, and worked too
hard, so we sold out and came here and bought my farm, with the mortgage
hitching it, and I went to work for dear life. Then Sarah died, and then
father. Along about then there was a girl I wanted to marry, but, Lord,
how could I even ask her? My farm started in as a failure, and it has
kept it up ever since. When there wasn't a drought there was so much
rain everything mildewed; there was a hail-storm that cut everything to
pieces, and there was the caterpillar year. I just managed to pay the
interest on the mortgage; as for paying the principal, I might as well
have tried to pay the national debt.

"Well, to go back to that girl. She is married and don't live here, and
you ain't like ever to see her, but she was a beauty and something more.
I don't suppose she ever looked twice at me, but losing what you've
never had sometimes is worse than losing