"Habberton, John - Everybody's Chance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Habberton John)

"Here; put some of this on your hands, and put these gloves on. Once in a while
I'm afflicted in the same way, after I've been out of axe practice a little
while. Give the oil a few minutes in which to get in its work."
Champ returned to his tree, lopping off the boughs as if they were twigs,
cutting them into four-foot lengths and tossing them aside; then he cut the
trunk itself into four-foot lengths. Charley looked on in admiration, but while
the giant looked about for another foeman worthy of his steel the younger man
exclaimed:
"What a magnificent specimen of manhood you are! It is a man like you whom Luce
should marry. I suppose, however, she knows her own mind."
"Whether she does— or no—" said Champ, speaking between the strokes of his axe,
"her mind is— the only one she can go by— for the present." Then he stopped a
moment and said, "Can't you possibly talk of something else? You ought to be
thinking and talking about how much you will do in a day, and asking who is most
likely to buy the wood and pay quickest, and where you can best put your money
at interest as fast as you collect it. Talking about a girl never helped a man
to marry her; 'tis work— nothing else— that makes a man worthy of the love he
pretends to bear a woman."
"I guess you're right, Champ," sighed Charley, addressing himself once more to
work, "but I wish I knew where you got so much sense. I won't ask you any more
about it, as it seemed to worry you a few minutes ago, but whoever the girl is
that you're fond of, why, she's going to be the happiest woman alive."
"Umph, I hope so, but— I shan't believe it— until I— see it."
"Come, now, old fellow, you shouldn't distrust yourself in that stupid manner.
'Faint heart never won fair lady'— keep that saying close in mind. Why, it was
the most daring thing in the world— my proposing to Luce; I had everything
against me, and I knew it; I took my chances, though, and you know what came to
pass. If you would only see yourself as you are, and as everybody else sees you,
and as the girl herself can't help seeing, and—"
"Will you be quiet?" exclaimed Champ, suddenly turning with a threatening face
and with his axe still uplifted.
"No, I won't," replied the younger man, with a calm but determined face. "You've
done me a great favor this morning, and I want to do you one in return. You may
think that I want to pry into your affairs, but I don't. I want to tell you,
though, what the lecturer told all of us last night, that every man has his
chance in life, that it is very close to him, and that only he is to blame if he
won't see it. To be happily in love is the one thing you need to make you as
happy as you are manly, and I'm sure that's saying a great deal. Instead of that
you're belittling yourself. You're my friend; you've done more for me this
morning than any other man ever did, and until I can do something equally good
for you I want to ease my mind by giving you some good advice. You ought to do
just what I have done, determining, as I did, that whatever else had to be done
afterward I would do with all my might, or make a better man of myself while
failing. Why don't you do it? Have you proposed yet?"
"No!"
"Doesn't the girl even know that you love her?"
"No. I don't see, at least, how she can know it."
"That's bad— for her. 'Twould make life a very different thing for any woman in
this dead-and-alive town to know that a man like you cared for her. Women in
Brundy— young women— have a pretty dismal outlook. I'm not going again to ask