very steadfast and quiet--you knew that there was rarely any harm in
them; but I admit that their aspect was unpromising enough at first
sight. A stranger might have been forgiven for thinking them coarse,
ignorant, stupid, beery, unclean. And yet there was excuse for much of
it, while much more of it was sheer ill-fortune, and needed no excuse.
Though many of the men were physically powerful, few of them could boast
of any physical comeliness. Their strength had been bought dear, at the
cost of heavy labour begun too early in life, so that before middle-age
they were bent in the back, or gone wrong at the knees, and their walk
(some of them walked miles every day to their work) was a long shambling
stride, fast enough, but badly wanting in suggestiveness of personal
pride. Seeing them casually in their heavy and uncleanly clothes, no one
would have dreamed of the great qualities in them--the kindliness and
courage and humour, the readiness to help, the self-control, the
patience. It was all there, but they took no pains to look the part;
they did not show off.

In fact, their tendency was rather in the contrary direction. They cared
too little what was thought of them to be at the pains of shocking one's
delicacy intentionally; but they were by no means displeased to be
thought "rough." It made them laugh; it was a tribute to their
stout-heartedness. Nor was there anything necessarily braggart in this
attitude of theirs. As they realized that work would not be readily
offered to a man who might quail before its unpleasantness, so it was a
matter of bread-and-cheese to them to cultivate "roughness." I need not,
indeed, be writing in the past tense here. It is still bad policy for a
workman to be nice in his feelings, and several times I have had men
excuse themselves for a weakness which they knew me to share, but which
they seemed to think needed apology when they, too, exhibited it. Only a
few weeks ago a neighbour's cat, affected with mange, was haunting my
garden, and had become a nuisance. Upon my asking the owner--a labourer
who had worked up to be something of a bricklayer--to get rid of it, he
said he would get a certain old-fashioned neighbour to kill it, and then
he plunged into sheepish explanations why he would rather not do the
deed himself. "Anybody else's cat," he urged, "he wouldn't mind so
much," but he had a touch of softness towards his own. It was plain that
in reality he was a man of tender feelings,