I see myself, if that's being sober. I don't ask your opinion
of me; I am a deserter, false to my colours, a breaker of his oath. Only
mark this: I was married, and a common trooper, married to a handsome
young woman, true as steel; but she was handsome, and we were starvation
poor, and she had to endure persecution from an officer day by day. Bear
that situation in your mind. . . . Providence dropped me a hundred pounds
out of the sky. Properly speaking, it popped up out of the earth, for I
reaped it, you may say, from a relative's grave. Rich and poor 's all
right, if I'm rich and you're poor; and you may be happy though you're
poor; but where there are many poor young women, lots of rich men are a
terrible temptation to them. That's my dear good wife speaking, and had
she been spared to me I never should have come back to Old England, and
heart's delight and heartache I should not have known. She was my
backbone, she was my breast-comforter too. Why did she stick to me?
Because I had faith in her when appearances were against her.
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