here his
girl was living and awaiting him. She had a little saved up: he knew
that, though he feared it might have gone like his. They were married,
however; they fed, rejoiced, and joked; and 'for to du the thing proper
like,' they hired a trap to drive them home. With what money was left
they embarked on married life, and their children made no unreasonable
delay about coming. "Aye!" says Tony, "I'd du the same again--though
'twas hard times often."

Before I left Seacombe I asked a fisherman's wife, who was expecting
her sixth or seventh child, whether she had enough money in hand to go
through with it all; for I knew that her husband was unlikely to earn
anything just then. "I have," she said, "an' p'raps I an't. It all
depends. If everything goes all right, I've got enough to last out, but
if I be so ill as I was wi' the last one, what us lost, then I an't.
Howsbe-ever, I don't want nort now. Us'll see how it turns out." She
went on setting her house in order, preparing baby linen and making
ready to 'go up over,' with perfect courage and tranquillity. When one
thinks of the average educated woman's fear of childbed, although she
can have doctors, nurses, anaesthetics and every other alleviation, the
contrast is very great, more especially as the fisherman's wife had
good reason to anticipate much pain and danger, in addition to the
possibility of her money giving out.

Those are not extraordinary instances, chosen to show how courageous
people can be sometimes; on the contrary, they are quite ordinary
illustrations of a general attitude among the poor towards life. To
express it in terms of a theory which in one form or another is
accepted by nearly all thinkers--the poor have not only the _Will to
Live_, they have the _Courage to Live_.

[Sidenote: _THE COURAGE TO LIVE_]

On the whole, they possess the _Courage to Live_ much more than any
other class. And they need it much more. The industrious middle-class
man, the commercial or professional man, works with a reasonable
expectation of ending his days in comfort. He would hardly work
without. But the poor man's reasonable expectation is the workhouse, or
some almost equally galling kind of dependency. The former may count
himself very unlucky if after a life of work he comes to destitution;
the latter is lucky if he escapes it. Yet the poor man works on, and is
of at least as good cheer as the other one. If he can rub along, he is
even happy. He is, I think,