He is regarding wistfully his own place in the world, there before him.

His mind, as he watches, is grown up for a moment; and he foresees, as it were, in that moment, all the long tale of days, of early awakings, of his own coming life of drudgery at work like this.
"A man comes along carrying a boy whose rough work has already begun--the only child--whose presence beside him sweetened the father's toil a little.

The boy has been badly injured by a fall of brick-work, yet, with an effort, he rides boldly on his father's shoulders.

It will be the way of natural affection to keep him alive as long as possible, though with that miserably shattered body.--'Ah! with us still, and feeling our care beside him!'-- and yet surely not without a heartbreaking sigh of relief, alike from him and them, when the end comes.
"On the alert for incidents like these, yet of necessity passing them by on the other side, I find [177] it hard to get rid of a sense that I, for one, have failed in love.

I could yield to the humour till I seemed to have had my share in those great public cruelties, the shocking legal crimes which are on record, like that cold-blooded slaughter, according to law, of the four hundred slaves in the reign of Nero, because one of their number was thought to have murdered his master.