Life has no veneering for them; they look hard realities in the face and meet them as they can.

They are the true philosophers, and their straightforwardness about grief and disease is not callousness; it is directness, and generally means as much, if not more, feeling than the hysterical wailings of more cultivated emotion, more organized nerves.
"Yes, sir," she said to me, with that strange dignity of language that trouble gives to the poor, just raising her apron to her eyes, "it's my master, sir--Mr.Keighley, sir.

The doctor has given him up, and he's only waiting to die.

It don't give him much pain, his complaint; and it leaves his head terrible clear.

But he's fearful afraid to die, sir; and that's where it is.
"Not that he's not lived a good life; been to church and paid his rent and tithe reg'lar, been sober and industrious and good to his people; but I think, sir," she said, "that there's one kind of trembling and fearfulness that we can't get over: he keeps saying that he's afraid to meet his God.