HUMOR/AUSTRALIA JOE WILSON'S COURTSHIP (PT 1) by HENRY LAWSON

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"Joe Wilson's Courtship" by Henry Lawson (1901) Part 1

Every now and then a writer comes along who does something that sounds simple and is anything but — he tells the truth about ordinary people, in ordinary moments, with such precision and such tenderness that you feel, reading him, that someone has finally said the thing you always knew but could never quite find the words for.

Henry Lawson was that writer. An Australian. A bushman's son. A man who grew up poor and hard in the outback of New South Wales in the 1880s, who went half-deaf as a child, who struggled with drink and money and the particular loneliness of a man who sees the world more clearly than most and can't always decide whether that's a gift or a curse.

He wrote short stories. Some of the finest short stories in the English language. And at the very peak of his powers — in 1901 — he gave us a character named Joe Wilson. A young bushman. Not a hero in any conventional sense. Not remarkable. Just a man in love with a woman named Mary, terrified she won't have him, not quite able to believe his luck when she does.

Lawson gave Joe Wilson a line of self-description that I have never forgotten since I first read it.

"I wasn't a healthy-minded, average boy," Joe says. "I reckon I was born for a poet by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman."

Born for a poet by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman.

If you have ever felt even slightly out of step with the life you landed in — if you have ever loved someone and been absolutely certain you were going to say the wrong thing — if you have ever stood at the edge of something wonderful and thought, surely this isn't really meant for me —

Joe Wilson's story is your story.

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