“But though an unlettered man, naturally rough, and not made any smoother by years of hard buffeting with men as rude as himself, Blake still possessed a little of the poetry of childhood. The love of the beautiful that is implanted in all youthful breasts was not altogether dead within his, and when the above lines were warbled to him by a half intoxicated customer, he shouted for all hands, and vowed that that pioneer, the writer of ‘that ere song,’ should never want a fifty of flour while he remained on the Coast.”
Another characteristic anecdote, showing the man’s firmness and sensibility, and we let Blake alone. He received a business letter, and I read it for him. It merely contained invoices of goods, and solicited further patronage. “What’s on the envelope?” said Blake. “Your name and address,” I answered. “What’s that behind the name?” “Esquire,” I replied. “Well, I’m d———," said the merchant, “I’ve laid out money—cash down—hundreds of pounds—with that firm, and now they take a rise out of a man by calling him Esquire.” “Not another penny will they see of my money,” he added with an oath, and he kept his word.
“Lives of great men all remind us
We may make our lives sublime;
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.”
Blaketown had its day, and its glory departed. “How’s trade?” I asked one morning, shortly after Greymouth was a township. “There aint bin a fight this week,” was the answer. It was brief, and to the uninitiated ambiguous, but to me it told a sad tale of ruin and decay.
