Chains rattling, winches groaning, sun shining, longshoremen shouting,
breezes blowing.
"_God's in His heaven--
All's right with the world._"
And the dock postman (dear old Postie, who cadges sticks of hard
tobacco and cigars from us when he brings good news) is standing on
the quay while the ship is being moved into her new berth, and he
waves a batch of letters when he sees me looking towards him. So! I
have been burrowing in our boilers, testing the scale, inspecting
stays and furnace crowns, and the joy of working has come back to me.
I was solemn last evening, melancholic and somewhat metaphysical it
seems; but let it stand. 'Tis morning, and Postie's on the quay.
I breakfast alone. The others are ashore, but they will appear during
the day to finish up and to bestow mementoes on the wretched one they
leave behind. And so I sit smoking my pipe by the mess-room fire;
Postie descends, beaming expectantly. He hands me two letters, one
from my friend, one from----
There was a thick mist before my eyes, the fire seemed an infinitely
distant red blur, and Postie, several continents away, was burbling
about possible promotions, good voyage, fine weather, tobacco, and the
like. Forgive me, old man, but your letter lay unopened for a while. I
poured tobacco and cigars into Postie's pockets, and sat down to think
things out. Was it foolish of me to sit down to think? To set down
the problem thus: Here am I, a man of infinite, almost unknowable
latent possibilities, suddenly repossessed of the supreme power and
glory of life. How can I, by taking thought, bring out those same
possibilities, make them actual and patent to the world, apply them to
the highest and noblest uses, and so justify myself before men? In
some such manner did I put to my own soul the position, trying ever to
keep in view the sanctity, the holiness of life, and the preciousness
of its holiest of holies, where dwell, as I have said, the power and
the glory.
It is late in the evening of this most momentous day, and I must put
down my pen, but there is one thought which perhaps may serve as
answer to the scepticism so often expressed when I asserted my belief
in this world after all. I mean if a man, when he experiences some
transcendent joy, is prompted to express that joy in terms of nobler
effort and sterner consecration to the welfare of others--does not
this fact lead him to infer that happiness is, at least, more natural
than unhappiness? that the universe does indeed exist, in Emerson's
phrase, "hospitably for the weal of souls"? That, in fine, when the
majority turn their faces this way, first keeping the houses of their
souls swept and garnished for the love they are awaiting, then will
the mountain of our misery be levelled, our valleys of despair filled
up, and the rough places of life made plain?
So, at least, it seems to me just now as I sit and write. How I long
for a talk with my friend!
"_You're my friend!
What a thing friendship is, world without end!_"