^'''^m^m^ 111! . "-V VV /V V ijvg^v^^^ ^®P5;y3^;'*wfi»"^ iuvv^tu' «4i- |Vy*';vvyyVyyg»g^y- Mmft ffl ^^f fe /^^ # ,^.j'^: -^;-^.'^'' to; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ©i^ap inp^rij]^ Ifjj Shelf."B.MF5 |JL%3 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. w^v • vvw"v^u^f^P«"?:!W VVg'l^vvvv •'V^mM*' fSs^TO. ^.^i&iOrf?^^^^^^^' VVVWU iV i'lJ^^^C^t^J^Wfe >iy:^^mg^ww^^ ic^iiimviiiyMrM"F ' V-vvv>\7V AlV;'»^2SM*vW ;^ ..j^y'v: vyy^^j. -VUQV ^^,^,^^^ ■.^\i% !J^w^WCi:.^^ yy^^«^^ ^&^^^i '^.,//'^^f^wjm^''m^. "^^^mmm^ w'^u 'V^gwvu^Cu^^ ;.SJ55gS55^wf»:'vvo. , ,^v.^^^v^' irafe.Si /iS£ii*'JVW,feiiW ®y sw *-»'li^« ; /i/ ^^ <4 \ March 12, 1883. Price, 25 Cents. No. 84. Copyrlffht, iaS3, by Fttnk & Waoxali 8. Entered in New York Poit-Offic« as MCoiid-«\a6* mail matter. Siil)Rrrlpflnn f-rli o. per year, ^5. PTUIXIB ERS 1 "TO 79. Prevfotts numbers of tins Library were known by the name Standaei) Seriks. A list of these 79 books will be found on the 3d page of the cover of ttiis volume. Thev are printed in 4to, 8vo, and 12ino sizes, and are bound in postal card mauilla. They aw standard books, and are very clieap. Fi^OTSAM AiVO JETSAM. By THOMAS GIBSON BOWLES. This master mariner evidently launched his yacht with his eyes in his head— just where they ought to be. He has used them well, and succeeded in gathering much valuable Flotsam, and in fishing up from the deep strange specimens of Jetsam. The book literally abounds with new and sometimes startling thoughts, put In a style which proves the strik- ing originality of the author's mind. While sailing from place to place In his yacht Ir- meets with varied experiences, and notes down in graphic pen-pictures facts and the lessons he gathers from them. His strongest characteristic is his deep knowledge of human nature, and sometimes he gives us such pictures of it as must make the reader wince; and yet there Is such a fascination In Its pages that, however we may sometimes differ from his opinions and conclusions, and smart under his portrayal of human weak- nesses, we cannot lay the book down until it is all read, and even then Intelligent readers will not be satisfied, but will return to it and read it again. PAXTOX HOOO'S LIFE OF CROMWEEL. No. 80 Standard Library (No. 1, 1883 Series). Price, 25c. SCIEI^CE EV SHORT CHAPTERS. ' By W. MATTIEU AVILLIAMS, F.R.S.A., F.C.S. No. 81 Standard Library (No. 2, 1883 Series). Price, 25c. AMERICAX HEIVIORISTS. By R. H. HAWEIS. No. 82 Standard Library (No. 3, 1883 Series). Price, 15c. LIVES OF lEEESTRIOUS SHOERSAKERS. By WILLIAM EDWARD WINKS. No. 83 Standard Library (No. 4, 1883 Series). Price, 25c. rtEADING- CIRCLES. What can better and more rapidly cultivate the literary taste than the rightly managed Reading Circle? In a number of localities, sometimes within churches, sometimes wholly secular, such circles have been in operation during the past year. Cheap books make theui eaf^ily possible. It will be no difficult tasK to establish sucii circles In connection with the Standard Libbary. A valuable book can now be secured, without overtaxing the purse, by each member of thie club every two weeks. It can be read during the intervening period . A critical essay upon the book by some one appointed for this purpose should be read and then the discussion made general, in which the merits and demerits of the ))ook may be pointed out, or the subject of the book be discussed. It is wonderful how rapidly by such a plan a literary taste Is developed. To encourage the formation of these Circles we will give the following PRIZES: 1. We will donate Ten Dollars' worth of any of our books to the library of the R.eati> ing Circle that will send us the best plan of organization for a Reading Circle on or before April, 1883. 2. We will donate Five Dollars' worth of any of our books to the Library of the Read- ing Circle that will send us the best critical essay on any one of the 26 books issued during 1883. The essay must be written by a member of the Reading Circle, and must be sent us within eight weeks after the date of the issue of the book. The date of issue is printed on each book. Each essay should contain about 25iK) words. This offer holds for the 26 books published this year. We will claim the privilege of publishing in book- form the 26 successful essays at the close of the year. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. A YACHTSMAN'S EXPERIENCES AT SEA AND ASHORE. BY THOMAS GIBSOISr BOWLES MASTEK MARINER. "The sea's a rumbustical place."— Bill Wigo. NEW YORK: FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 10 AND 12 Dey Street. 71? 4-1''' \2i- PUBLISHERS' NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. Several changes have been made in this edition of " Flotsam and Jetsam " upon the English edition ; the most important of which is the addition of a full Index. The English edition contains no Index. New Yobk, March 1, 1883 Copyright, 1883, by Funk & Wagnalls, New York. PEEFAOE. I DO not pretend to be a sailor — none but a sailor knows how much that word means — but I love the Sea. From my boy- hood (I once ran away to go to sea, but was captured and ignominiously brought back when well on my way to Liver- pool) I have sought to learn sea-lore ; and I have now learned how little I know of it. But seafaring has become, and still is, to me, a school, a consolation, and a refuge from the trivialities, the meannesses, and the confusions of land life. The grand, solemn, serious Sea, so exacting yet so loving, so remorseless yet so kindly, always reminds me — sometimes when I have well-nigh forgotten it — that there are real things in the world as well as unreal phrases ; plain duties as well as doubtful opinions ; proved methods as well as shifting specu- lations, philosophies, and policies. So it is that these writings arose. I did not set out to make a book. I did think these thoughts, such as they are, and see these things, and simply set them down as they came to me. They are not mere inventions ; they are the expression of what was struck out of me in the conflict between the reali- ties of the Sea and the fancies of the shore. This is my only excuse for them. T. G. B. Cleeve Lodge, Hyde Park Gate, London. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. FLOTSAM CHAPTER I. On Board the Billy Baby, CowES, 8th May, 1874. A REAL man is always alone in the world. Were he not he would not be a real man, as I understand it — that is to say, a distinct entity, not a copy of all other men, but with the prin- cipal and important part of him thoroughly belonging to him- self. How shall such a one find a mate who shall really be such to him ? Pieces of looking-glass indeed he may find, which will according to their quality more or less reproduce the outside of him as they will of any other — they have been quicksilvered to that one end ; but a duplicate of himself ; nay, or another at all like himself, he may not hope for in man or woman. For his especial character is that he is what he himself and Providence have made him ; that he has set up in the chaos with infinite labor and good fortune a little plat- form of his own just broad enough for the sole of his foot. Another cannot stand there with him, though many be above and some perhaps below. If he be the real man, that place is his and his alone : he is a separate being and principle, and as such he can have no companion. This is no part of my story — or of my notes, or whatever 6 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. form this writing may take, for I have not yet made its ac- quaintance — but merely a reflection on John Stuart Mill's autobiography, which I read coming down in the train. He thought he had found a mate, and labors touchingly to prove her such ; but to my mind he fails as touchingly. Only I was struck by the fact that he who was a great man, and I who am a little one, have both come very independently to the same conclusion — that for any man, great or little, it is at least im- possible to find companionship there where most usually it is sought. " There is," he says, " an inclination natural to thinking' ' (and he might have added, to unthinking) ' ' persons when the age of boyish vanity is once past for limiting their own society to a very few persons. General society as now carried on in England is so insipid an affair, even to the persons who make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason rather than the pleasure it affords." To me, who was then on my way to limit my own society to three North Sea fishermen, this was very satisfactory, and I settled once for all that Mill was at any rate a social observer, if not a social philosopher. '' The society of three North Sea fishermen, indeed !" I think I hear some refined one exclaim. Yes, indeed, the society of three North Sea fishermen — of three men who have passed their lives among stern realities, who are ready and brave, true and intelligent, and who have not been demoralized by a daily consumption of platitude and sophistry. Not from Cowes are they, nor like the men of Cowes, who have been demoralized thus and by other means, but fresh from the Dogger, with all their rough honesty upon them. If I were in London I should be in contact with A and B and C, notorious and self -admitted imitations of a dishonest ideal. Are these not much better than they ? Yes, indeed ; and I am mistaken if they do not leave me purer and higher notions of society than any one of my three Londonners, infinitely superior per- sons though they be as the common scale of comparison goes. ****** Why on earth will this stove not burn ? I need it badly FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 7 enough, Heaven knows, for it is as cold to-night as the face of a great lady ; and the mere run hither down from Southamp- ton through the murk of the evening has chilled me to the bone. And withal somebody must have run down the Spit buoy again, for though I never went close to its proper place, and saw all the other buoys, we none of us made this. 3|C ^ V '1^ '1^ »l* But I remember that I have not yet given an account of my- self and of these notes. I came down in the train with three strangers. One of them offered me a light, and said it was a fine day. That was not true, and if it had been true would not have been important. Nor would it have been more true or more important if I had known whither that man was going, and what his portmanteau contained. Yet these are the first questions people seem determined always to ask and to answer any man, instead of the last as they should be. How can I say who or what in the world I am ? I don't know — do you ? You have no doubt a form of words ready on your lips — *' M or N, as the case may be"; but words with- out ideas are mere abattis, trees without root ; of no further consequence until they have been converted into the form of some new idea. Certainly I am not a hero. Yet I am going, so far as I see, to talk of myself, which is, in fact, what we all always do, whether we know it or not. A very impertinent habit, no doubt, and quite indefensible ; and yet at the end of the ac- count, as the French say, what you and I most want to get at is a notion of me and of you, which is also what we get at, or even near, the least often. Otherwise we should perhaps hate, envy, and despise each other less than we do. Just think of the force of human sympathy. Any man who gets up at Charing Cross, and opens his mouth, will have a crowd of people about him before he has said two sentences ! 8 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. Poole, Saturday, 9tli May, 1874. Ah ! it was a lovely sunrise this morning for those of us who saw it, and the outline of land and sea, of mast and rigging, pencilled themselves softly on the gray sky as the light stole after us down the Solent. And to think that there are people who live in houses, and lie abed of a morning ! ****** I remember there was once a man who invented the principle of self-interest as sufficient for all mankind all through life. Jeremy, thou wast a noodle. Didst thou not see, dost thou not now see, that we are all of necessity mere trustees ? Here is Ned, for instance, roused up at three this morning, and now striving all he knows to make out that black buoy. Yes, I do pay him a salary, and as between us it may seem at first a mere affair of self-interest. But is he not a trustee for his old mother at Aldeburgh, to whom he is going to send a post- office order for one-pound-ten this very day, and also for his young woman, whom he intends some day to endow with the scanty bliss of a seaman's marital attentions — nay, even for the fabricator of those sea-boots and the Chinaman grower of that tea which makes me shudder, but which he gulps down scald- ing with so much gusto ? All for self ? What, even his young woman ? Then self has no longer a meaning, and we are stumbling as usual over words. ****** Was there ever such a rich, bountiful, delightful climate as this maligned one of ours ? I know none, and don't believe there is any with so inexhaustible a play of light, shade, and atmosphere. Here, while I have been looking from my deck at this decayed, sordid town of Poole, have I seen in ten minutes at least half a dozen different cities in it, each with its particular tone of beauty, and all various. They say it is like Venice, wherein they are wrong, for it is far better and more beautiful to look at, and with far more, if with other, beauties than Venice. Not to live in, though — nor to sit for in Parlia- ment — but just to look at from the deck of a boat. FLOTSAM Al^D JETSAM. 9 How strangely the mind of man is constituted ! Here is Bill, my equerry-in-waiting, groom of the chambers, and cordon hleu, quite unable to see that nothing will save one from losing all the bedclothes in the night except tucking them up. I have explained this to Bill, and shown him how it is connected with the eternal laws of physics that when a man rolls about with an unquiet spirit, clothes must go if they are not tucked in. I suppose he intends it as a hint to lie quiet. I will take it as such. Havre, Wednesday, 13th May. There are two situations in which a man feels that he is quite alone, and that he can look for help to no human being but himself. The one is on the back of a runaway horse, the other in command of his vessel at sea when he is running for a tidal harbor in a gale of wind, and finds he can't save his tide in and will have a lee shore to deal with. Woe betide him if he dare not then trust his own judgment ! Woe betide him indeed if he cannot readily form new plans ! On the whole, I think the runaway horse is the better place of the two. I saw a barge deep laden come out of Poole yesterday, and watched him going up Channel — I wonder how he fared in the breeze — and it was at the time a pleasure to think that we had a better craft under us than he. Poor fellow ! I dare say he thinks just as much of his skin as I do of mine, little as either of them is worth in the general scheme of creation ! The art of the true use of garlic is the whole secret of taste- ful cookery. Rub a crust of bread with garlic and put it in your salad, and the whole thing at once has a savor which nothing else would give it. And so with men. I know one, for example, who would be simply nothing were he not known for the profession of infidelity ; but having that, he is supposed to have a flavor of his own and is considered accordingly ; 10 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. whereas in reality he has only been rubbed over with other men's garlic. ****** How hard it is to do the very smallest thing precisely as it should be done ! Just go to the very centre of anchors and cordage and try to get a two-hundred weight Trotman and ninety fathom of seven-inch warp. It will make you respect failures for the rest of your life. CHAPTER II. Off Cape d'Antifer, 14th May, 1874. Some men are born lucky and others have luck thrust upon them. How many of us are there who pass our lives in run- ning away from our own happiness, and are never overtaken by it till both it and we are well-nigh exhausted ! Lucky are they who are brought to book by Fortune, who get a fall early in the race, and who are perforce compelled thenceforth to go limpingly and to give their good angel a chance. A great Grief has often made a great man, a little grief has still more often made a little one completely to fulfil that purpose in his existence which else he would have missed. Solomon was a wise man, yet it took him a long life and seven hundred wives to find out that there is nothing worth doing but to eat, drink, and make love, and enjoy the fruits of one's labor. Some of us unwise ones must indeed have had our luck thrust upon us to find it out while we could still do all these things. A splendid summer day, wooing the very coat off your back and the shoes off your feet, a fair wind, just enough if it lasts to take you to your port, and a dinner composed by the cunning- est cook in Havre, with nobody, not even the postman, to stand between you and your wildest fancies, these will com- pare — nay, they do being now present (for that is the test) FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 11 compare — with any kind of luck I know in these days ; and certainly none of these would have been mine if I could have had my own way say four months ago. ^ Tv TV 3f* T^ -i^ The curse of labor was a very short-sighted curse to inflict upon man, constituted as he is. Indeed it is no curse at all ; but rather the one only blessing in life, the source of all real content and the great consolation for all sorrows, and even for all worries. Of course one must have work that one can do, but that is a mere question of choice in a world where there is so much to do of so many various kinds ; and not a difficult question either, for almost anybody can do almost anything if they will but address themselves to it. The choice once made, what is there to equal or to come near to the delight there is in grappling with the work ; what moments arc there like those when, bracing your nerves and setting your teeth, you rejoice as a giant refreshed, to run the race before you and feel the distance disappearing beneath your feet ? Not the triumph of the victory, still less the repose on the other side the goal — for that is but a kind of death between the races in which alone you feel that you really live. I can understand those who work for the sake of the work, I can't understand those who work for the sake of the rest that is to follow. See the man who has " retired from business" of whatever kind — is not his first act to go into business of another kind ? He leaves selling cottons and takes to buying pictures and society. What then ? He has only exchanged a work he could do for one he cannot, and he will certainly gain no more but rather much less profit and glory in the one than in the other. ****** I am persuaded that this world was organized for an entirely different set of creatures from those who inhabit it. Looking at this infinite multitude of stars above me, many of them cer- tainly, and all of them possibly, inhabited, I can well under- stand how easily the wrong set of inhabitants may have got 1^ FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. into our Planet by mistake, just as in the old stage trick of putting the wrong letter in the envelope. ** The only thing that is at all decently done on earth," said a great man once to me, '' is the coming of the leaves, which we do at least get when we want shade ; all the rest is wrong ; for instance, the days are long in summer when, the sun being hot and the night pleasant, they ought to be short, while they are short in winter when the sun is so valuable that we want more, and the night so detestable that we want less of it. ' ' Look again at winds. If they were sensibly arranged we should have them blowing strongest on shore, where gales are of no great importance, while they would always be moderate at sea, instead of the reverse being the case. Then there are the tides, so arranged that they run strongest when they rise highest, whereas it would be manifestly better if they were to do so when they rise the least, because that would give one so much better a chance of getting into tidal harbors. The moral order of things is an old subject of complaint. Yet it only needs one reform in order to make them perfectly easy of treatment — that is a means of comparing moral capac- ity. For then we should have nothing more to do than to say that every man shall have all the enjoyment he is capable of containing, but that he shall not steal from other men's measures that which will not go into his, but only run over and be abso- lutely wasted. There is enough enjoyment in the world for all, and to spare, but your two-gallon man will get three, four, or five gallons more than can be of any kind of use to him, while your one-gallon man is perhaps empty altogether. Dieppe, 15th May, 1874. Why it should always blow half a gale of wind right on the shore whenever you are waiting your tide to get into these French harbors is another thing I should like to know. The only advantage I at present see in it is that it keeps you up all night hove-to off Cape d'Ailly, and furnishes you with the FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. 13 work and excitement of furling half your sails and double-reef- ing the rest. Which illustrates what I have already said, for now we are in I only feel rather tired and bruised with our knocking about, and have lost all interest in the weather. ****** I fear the French are now at least beginning really to experi- ence the effects of the war upon their commerce. At Havre it is impossible to get freight of any kind for any vessels, and this port of Dieppe has not above five vessels in it where usually there are two or three hundred. Never did a place look so utterly deserted. I have just had my hair cut in order to talk about it, and this was the conversation that took place to a running accompaniment of scissor-clicking : *' C'est qu'on n'a pas de confiance dans la solidite du Gou- vernement, et alors les affaires ne marchent pas, comme mon- sieur voit.^* * " On avait cependant confiance dans 1' Empire." *' Oh, pour 9a, oui." " Et pourtant il n'etait pas bien solide." " Non, mais enfin on croyait tout de meme k sa solidit6." ' ' Croyez done a la solidit6 du Septennat. ' ' '* Oh ! Monsieur !" ****** A charming people are these French. The whole of the Hotel Royal turned out to welcome me when I went to dine there yesterday, asked me affectionately all round after my health and my doings, and provided me with a sauce Hollandaise, * "When people have no confidence in the strength of the Gov- ernment, then affairs do not get along, as monsieur sees." "Yet they had confidence in the Empire." "As for that, yes." "And nevertheless it was not very solid." "No, but upon the whole people did believe in its strength all the same." "Well, then, trust in the stability of the Septennat." ' ' Oh, monsieui- ! ' ' 14 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. which was like eating the kingdom of joy. I remember an old French gourmet once said to me, ' ' Jeune homme, qiiand vous aurez epuise les delices de I'amour, des affaires, de la politique et de la religion, vous finirez comme moi par vous rabattre sur la cuisine." I begin to fancy I must have already arrived at that stage. ****** I never saw yet a woman so ugly that her lover could not believe in her beauty ; but I have seen one to-day so ugly that I doubt if she can believe in her own. I have loved many women, but never a beautiful one in all my life, and yet I have for the time always believed each to be the only one of Aer sex. CHAPTER TIT. On Board the Billy Baby, Dieppe, May 19th. We ought to be very grateful to Providence for having im- planted in each one of us that admirable conviction that / am the centre of the universe. If we, any of us, really believed that the world went round the sun instead of the sun going- round the world, or that we went round the world instead of the world going round us, life would be unendurable. As it is, all men and things are instruments and playthings for each one, even the most mean of us. I am not more intimately convinced that Bill was invented for my service than Bill is convinced that I was invented for his ; and he is right. I can't escape from revolving round Bill, and in all our dealings I am forced to feel his attraction and repulsion just as with all other bodies heavenly and earthly. His notions of making beds and coffee are my masters, and I have at last finally sub- mitted to them ; yet he has adopted my notion of brushing clothes and boots in part, and on the question of table napkins FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 16 and clean knives and forks we act with about equal force on each other. So that Bill is now so far reduced as it were to the position of a mean sun, which is never quite in its right place, but which must be supposed to be there for practical purposes. ****** Shoreham, 21st May, 1874. I wonder why in pictures of vessels at sea they are almost always represented as under full sail, with a fair breeze. In reality they should be represented close-hauled in a gale of wind, beating up for port against a head sea. It is a fine feel- ing to be proud of something, and I was proud of the Billy Baby last night when I saw her stripped like an athlete for the struggle, with storm jib, close-reefed mainsail, topmast struck, bowsprit reefed, and all snug, and felt her flying along under me within four points of that cruel north-easter — while my crockery was equally flying about the cabin below. Truly those that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters — these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. And it was a wonder, indeed, to note the first red streaks of morn away to the north-east, and to see them grow into the blessed light of day. A beautiful and lovable world indeed if people would only come to the right places in it. ****** The Billy Baby lies ignobly on her bilge inside the harbor, a scorn and a rebuke to the inhabitants of Shoreham, and pro- voking even the reflections of the cheap butcher who has come down to sell his joints by the sound of trumpet, forgetting that he too has a soul to be saved. For even Ned is but human, and turning up this narrow and, to all of us, unknown passage, he ran her ashore at four o'clock this morning. It should be a warning to every one never to go into strange places on a falling tide without a pilot — even when it is impossible to get one. It matters little ; the next tide will take us off, though at present there isn't a teacupful of water in the harbor 16 FLOTSAM AN"D JETSAM. — and after all you must be somewliere. I know people who are in bed at this moment. ****** There are things that would have been too much for the apostle John. Here is one such. When in Paris on Tuesday, I provided myself with a bunch of asparagus as big as a five- inch cable, and brought it down triumphantly to Dieppe for a Billy Baby dinner. Moreover, I got particular instructions from my valued friend Henri of the Cafe Bignon how to cook it. Now yesterday, struggling as we were with half a gale of wind, I, of course, could not dine at all to make any sense of it ; but to-day, lying tranquilly at the end of the Shoreham canal, within two miles of Brighton, I thought of my aspara- gus, and retailed to Bill all Henri's instructions as to its treat- ment, the prominent one of which was that it was to be lightly scraped before cooking. And now will anybody imagine my dismay to find that Bill, being ignorant of the ways and quali- ties of " grass," has scraped away all the heads, and cooked nothing but the white stalks ! I feel as if I had lost a day. ****** The only revelation we have of things unseen must be such as we can derive through reasoning by analogy from things that are seen. Let us leave Invention and learn from Experi- ence. Thus doing we shall soon see that Thought at least is eternal. No idea ever dies. It may be thrown into the air, but the very winds will take it and plant it, maybe in a far dis- tant soil, to germ and grow into a tree, in the branches of which the birds of the air shall lodge, and the trunk of which some day a workman shall take and make one half of it into a god to fall down and worship, and with the other half shall kindle a fire. Neither is an idea ever born. Create it you cannot- You take other ideas, and by their apposition you build up out of them what you call another and a new one. Alas ! no^ it is not given to you. You will find that same idea in David or in Solomon, or else it is in the Vedas, in the Koran, in Socra- FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 17 tes, or Plato. Nor was it new when they gave it a form. It came to them as the sun comes, first indeed to those who ear- liest rise, but sooner or later to all. It rose upon them as it has to-day risen upon you, as to-morow it will rise on some other, and so to the end of time — which is the end of eternity. ****** Portslade-by-Sea, 25th May. There is an idea which has been faced and accepted, adopted and propagated by all writers on civil organization from the greatest to the least, and which I am yet presumptuous enough to think absolutely false. It is this, that man in a state of nature is an animal utterly lawless and utterly solitary, a naked brute without a moral sentiment to clothe his immaterial, or a rag to cover his material nakedness, having no fellow-man in any kind of relation to him. It seems to me that that is, on the contrary, a conception of man in a purely unnatural state : for the first impulse of his nature is to clothe himself with a companion — even if it be but a woman — his spirit with an idea ; his body with a covering ; and his actions with a rule. Before he has done this he has not yet followed the imperious dictates of his nature ; when he has done it he no more ceases to be in a state of nature than an oak does because it was once an acorn, or than a swallow when it has built itself a nest, and flies away on its first winter journey to warmer climes. Find me a man placed on the earth, an acorn under it, or a swallow above it, content to remain as they are, and I will admit that the state of nature is a state preceding the effort to follow the dictates of nature. Till then, never. This then being so, what becomes of all the elaborate theo- ries and systems of polity and economy that have been built on the erroneous notion I have cited ? ^ What becomes of the materialist and the self-interested conceptions (however modi- fied by " enlightenment"), all these being founded on the as- sertion that all law, all society, all intellectual or moral motions of man are mere human inventions, ingeniously and for a pur- 18 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. pose embroidered on to the original man of whom they formed no part ? Why, they disappear, are extinguished, condemned, lost and gone forever. Let us more rationally — ^jes, more rationally — believe that man in a state of nature would be in a state of perfect sociability, ideality, and Law, and that he falls short of that only because he is so far not in a state of nature. ****** When you see a man drowning before you, do you hold that you have done your whole duty to him because you have paid your yearly subscription to the Humane Society ? I trow not. And now about the poor. Shall we say when the wretched cries for alms, that we have paid our poor-rates ? Are we to reply that his claim to a living share of the earth's fruits is a claim on the whole of society, and that we have discharged our quota ? Not so. I admit that this man who has done a day's work, and created for me a slight commodity, has a claim on me for his wage. Yet he has a claim only on me, for the com- modity is for my own sole use. Shall I then refuse him whose claim is not only upon me but upon all my fellows as well ? If so, I declare society bankrupt along with myself. ****** To-day is Whit-Monday, and I see a string of seven om- nibuses filled with people vulgar, and probably imperfectly washed, jaunting along the road on an excursion, the while they affront the air with many various songs, having only this in common — that they are all out of tune. Thanks to heaven I do not know them, and I can therefore rejoice that they in their way rejoice. And now if only one of them, through the sight of new objects, shall get an idea into his or her head, if merely that cornet-player shall discern dimly the harmonies of these dark piles planted in the blue water, of these yellow masses of pine awned with soft gray sky, and crowned with fleecy chaplets of cloud — why the day will be a profitable one to him, and maybe through him to all mankind. FLOTSAM Al^D JETSAM. 19 I once loved a woman. I held her for the best, the truest, the purest, and the strongest of God's creatures, and I could not endure to be near her for the doubts that arose every in- stant whether she really were all this. I love her now no more. I know her for a poor make-believe ordinary person ; and now her society is just as pleasant to me as that of any other human creature — neither more nor less. ****** This is an ungenerous world. Last night I set my trammel, thinking to catch at least a plate of fish for breakfast. This morning I found that somebody had hauled it in the night, taken out all the fish, and cast the net ashore on the bank. I cannot approve of that. The fish no doubt were as much his as mine, but considering that the net was mine alone, he might have left me half the take. CHAPTER IV. On Liberty, June 1. Bill having given me a week's leave to go and see my mam- ma and my young woman, I had a good cry over leaving the frigate, and took my departure to be among those incompre- hensible people who choose to live ashore when they might have a comfortable ship for half the money, and little more than twice the trouble. What a strange twist this is in men's minds that makes them all seek their pleasure in doing what they can't do well, and leaving what they can so do as a tiresome busi- . ness, only to be done under dire compulsion ! Whether there is anything beyond the bare sweeping of a crossing that / can do I know not, but it is clear to me thaf at any rate 1 can never be but a very poor sailor-man, and I am anmsed with myself to find that playing at sailors is nevertheless my most cherished delectation. I am sure if I only go on long enough I shall fancy myself quite a salt. What curious humbugs we all are ! ^ % '^ % H^ '^ 20 , FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. The art of war consists in knowing when to run away. So does the art of life. For it is always to be remembered that in battle both sides are all the time in a terrible fright, and that the question on which hangs the fate of the day is not which side is most brave, but which is least frightened. Therefore a good general who doubts the relative capacity of his troops to stand fright, will judiciously run before he meets the enemy, and while he can still do so under pretence of making a scien- tific ulterior combination. I once knew a man who had been disgracefully handled by a woman. He confided in me, used very strong and very proper language as to her baseness, and told me that he had taken steps to meet her under circum- stances which would enable him to show all the contempt and disgust he felt for her, and how thoroughly he had been cured of his deception. I advised him on the contrary to run. He would not, and now he is a married and miserable man. 4: « ^ * ^ % 2d June. I have seen a minster which has made me ask myself once again how people can believe the common fable of the histori- ans that the English were up to two hundred years ago a poor, uncultivated, half-savage people. This cathedral represents an amount of wealth, of labor, of sentiment, of loving art, and of devotion which ten Englands, and the natives of the Continent to boot, could not produce in these days. There are the pulses, the sinews, nay the very heart and life of thousands in those aisles, and the whole soul of a man in every touch of the chisel on those sculptures. Are we really richer, do we really work more effectually, are our aims higher and our feelings stronger and purer than in those so-called barbarous times ? Then let us build but one edifice equal to this and I will believe it. * ***** I never knew a single-minded woman. Their ideas are always married to themselves — and sometimes polygamously to FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 21 somebody else besides. An abstract notion or principle is quite beyond them. The other morning going ashore to buy some eggs for Bill, I asked the woman who sold them if she could assure me that they were fresh-laid. " Bless you, sir," she replied, " I wouldn't sell them for fresh-laid if they wasn't." ****** The necessity of having in all things an immutable, invaria- ble standard that can be appealed to, has always been held to be, and is in fact, manifest. Some people believe in the Bible, some in the Pope, some again mount higher and believe, as it were, through the Bible and the Pope, in the Divine truths of which they are the exponents. If we would be exact, allow- ance must be made, in every case of exposition of higher law, for the deviation of the material instrument. But what if it is believed that there is no deviation at all ? What if the vessel is navigated in that belief, and one day it is discovered that the bearings of things are all at sixes and sevens ? The other day, to my horror, I found I had got Cape d'Ailly on a bearing by my hitherto unsuspected compass, which would if it were a true bearing have put me a couple of miles up the country on the French land, whereas in fact I was at sea. Which brings me to this : that it is a thousand pities we cannot " swing" the Bible, the Pope, and other great standards, find out, as I am about to do with ihe " Billy Baby's" compass, what their exact deviation is with their head in any given point, and so make a table of corrections for future reference. ****** 3d June. Never leave the side of a woman you love. In a day she will cease to regret you, in two she will replace you by somebody else, in three she will refuse to believe tTiat you exist. Here have I been away from Billy Baby for a week, and I can eat and drink as though nothing had happened. ****** What strangers we all are to each other on the face of this 22 FLOTSAM Ai^D JETSAM. earth ! and how certain we all are to get credit precisely for the qualities we do not possess, and to be reproached with fail- ings from which we are free ! How many men are called su- percilious because they are timid, ill-mannered because they are shy, ill-natured because they love their fellows too well not to seek to benefit them at their own cost ! How many again are pronounced generous because they are selfish, wise because they have stolen other men's ideas, and able because they have placed themselves under other men's conduct ! I find the peo- ple at the various ports I put into all call me " captain" already, and I expect to end as admiral. * * * * * * 4th June. It is always the leaders of men who play them false. It is the judge who perpetrates injustice, the priest who invents im- piety, the minister who misgoverns his country, the popular as- sembly which betrays its choosers. This is inevitable when it is a trade to judge, to pray, to govern, and to talk ; for the trader looks only to the profit and permanence of his trade, and cares nothing for the wares he sells or the customer who buys them. You find men to pass Adulteration Acts to prevent chicory being mixed with coffee, sand with sugar, and water with milk, yet the idea has never been so much as conceived that it is a fraud to mix profit with public duty. Nevertheless this is at the bottom of all public troubles. * * * * * * The most delicious, the most fascinating and artistic woman^s dress I ever saw was one of which I caught a glimpse in Paris lately, made of black glazed calico. It belonged to, or at any rate it was on, a lady who was stepping out of a brougham into a shop in the Rue de la Paix. I saw it but for three moments, but I shall never forget it. And the most beautiful face and figure, the most finished grace, the most unaffected wit and frankness, and the best manners I ever knew belong at this mo- ment to a young lady who lives, we will say in Nottingham, FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. 23 and dresses on £20 a year. If she were mine I would make her into a company, advertise her, and benefit many share- holders besides myself. Being as she is more rare and precious than many mines, I shall carefully say nothing about her but this, that the London drawing-rooms are poor places to look for anything of really superior kind. CHAPTER y. Off Beachy Head, Saturday, 6th June. There is a use in everything no doubt, but I really should like to know the practical use of fogs in this well-regulated world. It is not that I doubt their use, but only that I should like to be able to explain it to the misbelieving advocate of fine clear weather — such as Ned. This same mania for explaining everything, the determination to bring down every mystery of the universe to the level of Pinnock's catechism, is probably at the bottom of a good half of the blunders of mankind. We have applied the universal rule of three to, and made a net re- suit of profit and loss out of, most things. Even religion is captured and set to work to make the best of both worlds. Are we forever to pretend to seek out the Almighty to perfec- tion, and not believe in his works till we can measure them with our foot-rule, or his laws till we have written them in articles thirty-nine or more ? Should we not rather be content to leave some few things in mystery ? I also could invent a use for fogs if I chose. I could repeat what some wiseacre has invented as to their causes in and their influence on the atmos- phere. Nobody would be the wiser, though somebody might be the more presumptuous for it. I prefer to rejoice that here is one more of the many things I don't understand. It is con- trary to my little interests for the moment, since it hides even Beachy Head light from me. But the first thing we have to 24 FLOTSAM Aiq"D JETSAM. learn — and this is one thing the sea teaches — is that we are each of us utterly unimportant atoms in the universe. Dover Bay, Sunday, June Ith. My man Tom believes that the right way to land on the beach in a broken sea is to pull the boat before it as fast as possible, and as he gave me a ducking by so doing to-day, I have been explaining to him that the right way is to back her against each wave, so as to keep her on the outer or safe side of each. Tom cannot receive this, being accustomed to get ashore at all hazards as fast as he can ; but I have explained to him that the sea will carry him there quite fast enough, and with all the more safety for his pulling gently against it. Is it not absurd to think that we have had rulers and govern- ors in whom men still believe (Lord Palmerston, the overrated, was one), who opposed the making of the Suez Canal, and spent five times what would have made it in such erections as the Alderney fortifications, the Spithead forts, and the Martello towers ? Nay, have we not still rulers and governors who are allowed to build ironclads, to support volunteer corps, and to maintain the Declaration of Paris ? It is charitable to suppose that we have all gone mad. But it is impossible to read what has been said and written on public affairs by the side of what is now said and written without being struck by this immense difference, that while formerly the speaker or writer used the language of an authoritative guide, he now uses that of an anx- ious follower. Formerly he laid down principles, and insisted upon them ; now he seeks a humor and flatters it. Then he was a stern, unbending schoolmaster, knowing more than his scholars, and walking among them not unfrequently with the rod; now he is a flycatcher, producing any one of the various catchemaliveos most in vogue. No politician or writer ever now sets himself to expose or to oppose a false principle which has taken ahold, or a delusion which has any considerable num- ber of supporters — for they are not leaders, but mere venders FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 25 of themselves and their prints ; and being so they will supply forts, ironclads, volunteers, or anything else that may be de- manded by two or three strong-lunged lunatics gathered to- gether. I have two Queen Anne silver candlesticks on board with me, just to remind me that I was born in a civilized country ; and they are not without their influence even on Bill, who cleans them lovingly in odd anchored moments. He puts them on the table with something of veneration and respect, which I am sure he never felt for the tin and brass of his home, and al- though, I am convinced, he must know that a candle would give just as good a light from those as from these. I cannot understand Voltaire's hatred for priests. I saw a country parson to-day, and I did not hate him at all. I said to myself, " There is a most respectable and useful man, if only he lives in his village, if he succors the widow and the fatherless, maintains in himself a local standard of cultivation and refinement, and limits his preaching to an enforcement of the decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount." Joseph de Maistre says there is no religion absolutely false, for that every one contains some grains of eternal truth. So indeed it is. A religion is in fact merely the form under which man has repro- duced and represented the Divine law as he best could. To mock at it because it is not in all respects perfect, is as though you should mock at man because he is not divine. * * * * ^ * It were worth while to live at sea were it only to see the sky and the stars. To think that each one of them has perhaps peoples and nations, constitutions and ministers, and that to you and to me they are all together but one mere speck of blue light in the black canopy of the heavens ! Possibly at this very moment some mariner sailing over the seas of the pole- star is taking an observation of this planet of ours figuring in his system of constellations as the hind leg of a donkey ; if, indeed, our existence has yet been discovered there. For there 26 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. are stars which are not even so much as a speck of bhie light to us, all our telescopes notwithstanding, and notwithstanding, too, that they may be the very bodies whose attraction just keeps us in our balanced place. Some of the men who have the greatest influence upon the history of their country, and the welfare of their race, own names which have never met the eye of the most inveterate newspaper reader. I know two or three such whose existence is only so much as suspected by a select few, who will not be found iu any biographical dictionary, and who are yet at this moment moulding the destinies of Europe. ****** Tuesday, 9th June. Coming into the river from the sea makes one understand how a shy man who has always lived in the country feels when he is one day bundled into London society. Surely we shall never be able to move among all these craft ; surely these craft themselves are not real. Manifestly they are not intended for service of any real kind. Here is a barge heavy-laden with hay down to the water's edge, merely drifting with the tide ; there is another gaudily decked with green bulwarks, a red til- ler, and a blue and yellow sprit ; here again is a shoal of small craft all legs and wings, full of men more carefully got up to represent real salts than if they had passed their lives off Cape Horn ; and here is a party on a steamer, packed as close as herrings, and supposed to be having the greatest enjoyment. Surely I have seen all these things before in London society. Here is a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and beaver-hat, leaning over the tiller of a barge. As he passes us he looks with a con- temptuous eye at our too fishing- boat-like cut, and asks, " Well, I'm blowed. Where did you pick her up ?" This also, I think, I have heard before. ****** Greenwich, Wednesday, 10th June. I am anchored just opposite a celebrated inn at Greenwich. It is a lovely evening. The windows of the hotel are all open, FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 27 and T see in them perhaps fifty people who all think they have been dining. Poor wretches ! they don't even know the differ- ence between that and eating. Some of them may have heard that there is a difference, but they believe it to be solely in the matter of cost, whereas it lies in palate and in trouble. With- out these you may eat whitebait devilled in all the colors of the rainbow, whiting pudding, (what a horror !) flounder souches and broils to the end of time ; but you will not dine. With these you may linger over the simple chop fresh-marked with the gridiron, toy with an omelet, a couple of tomatoes, a basket of fresh-gathered strawberries, and end with the only salad in England and the only coffee in Europe — all prepared by one to whom such things were as the Greek particles a month ago. Yet there are those poor people who think they have dined, and beneath them are three naked little boys diving for coppers which they in the fulness of their generosity — or rather in the generosity of their fulness — throw out. Truly we are a brutal people, we English. CHAPTER VI. Greenwich Reach, 15th June. To go down the river and back again, just to pass rapidly through as one passes through France or Italy, or other such low-born countries, is what many of us have done, and found that there is nothing in it beyond a number of ships lying in unintelligible places, and doing unintelligible things for un- known purposes, and a large number of dirty people not within the pale of humanity. But to live here, even for a few days, is a very different matter. I begin now tt) see that the real. London, the great throbbing, restless energy which makes the capital, and England too, what they are, is all on this side of London Bridge. The barges working up the river with the young flood, twenty of them in this Reach all one on top of 3B FLOTSAM AK"D JETSAM. the other, yet never breaking an egg ; the thousand slender wands that have pointed to every zenith in the celestial con- clave, lying clothed in their cobweb garment of cords ; the chimneys, the clamor, the high-pressure pufi5ngs, the uncouth tide-enslaved lighters ; nay, even the toiler, even on Sunday when the unfrequent blacking is on his monstrous hobnailed pachydermatous boot, and the paper collar and lavender tie are round his neck ; all these seem to represent something far more real, far more satisfactory, and far more representative of the better England than that ostentation of purse-proud servility into which it all passes through the crucible of Temple Bar. Yet most of us know nothing of all this, can see no beauty in it, and would, if we could, sink it in the bottom of the sea, as an uncouth, ungainly, rude spectacle to which the finer sort of mankind are not to be brought at any cost. How thoroughly the belief — once so strong — has died out, that Englishmen are all men of the same nation, brothers of the same family, bound to stick close together against the world if need be ! We are now, it appears, brothers only of those of our " class." The " gentlemen" are of one race, the mid- dUng classes of another, the working classes of yet another, while the women are of no race at all, but only of that of their children, cousins, and husband, or lieutenant male, as the case maybe. And then the gentlemen and the other '' classes" make themselves up into infinite subdivisions, each of which is as alien to the other as all are to each. So that we are all strangers and enemies to each other in the same land, with no sentimental ties and no recognized obligations to bind us to- gether, and a whole world of interests to separate us. I have heard of a house in that condition. Ht % ^ ^ * ^ I love to linger over those old prints of naval battles fought when England could meet and defeat the banded nations of Europe. Here is one of them in a gilt frame, stained and soiled, a wreck probably from some master mariner's household goods, hanging in an old clothes shop — a crowded, highly- FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 29 wrought engraving, defective in many points of art, but stirring the blood nevertheless. A principal figure in it is that of a sailor nailing his ship's colors to the stump of the mast while he is shot at by a hundred of the enemy's small-arm men. So even this most magnificent and moving pile of Greenwich has been taken away from the poor sailor, who was to spend his old age in it to all time according to the intent of its founders, and has been made into a college for the richer naval officer. The perpetual old shameful tale of taking from him that hath not and giving to him that hath. Thus did they three hundred years ago with those lands of the Church which had equally been set apart forever to the pious uses of God and the poor. I wonder who has fingered all the rich Greenwich endowments, shares, parts of prize-money, and others. I know we are told that the poor sailor is to have a money-pension given to him in lieu of his palace-home, just as the other poor have had indoor and outdoor relief in lieu of their own property and inherit- ance. But what is to replace that feeling that every English seaman who sailed up the Thames once had that here was his home, here in this most splendid shape the expression of the great value a great nation set upon his services ? Tuesday, 16th June. '^ What the gridiron do you mean by running into me ?" *' Ask my mamma, you friend of mankind — you should get out of the way." Such is the account, so far as words go, of an interview I had this morning with a professor of navigation in charge of a barge laden with hay. He had run into me with all his weight, and the strength of a spring tide, thrown me from one end of my cabin to the other, and startled tne out of a peaceful calculation of azimuth on to the deck. Beyond this, and knocking off a piece of copper as large as Mr. Gladstone's in- tellect, he had done me no harm ; in fact he had rendered me a service, for he gave me an excuse for feeling injured and 30 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. being angry for five minutes — which is one of the greatest hix- uries I know. Once there was a man — not indeed once only, for the adven- ture is being daily renewed — who suddenly became aware that his friend was a traitor, and his sweetheart a jilt. He com- plained bitterly, declared that there never was an injury like his, and swore that he must die without remedy. Yet if you look him over now, but five minutes as it were after the shock, you will find it hard to discover where he has even had a rub of his paint. ****** Thursday, 18th June. If ray eye really were at the surface of the sea my rail would appear far higher than it now does, and the sun lower ; so that this correction for Dip by which I bring my sun a few seconds lower than I observe him from the deck, is in truth a testi- mony to the fact that he is higher than my rail, as it ,is also a proof that as one enlarges one's horizon, that which is in itself low appears lower, while that which is really high appears higher. A graceless Frenchman once said : ' ' Les grands ne nous par- aissent grands que parce que nous sommes a genoux — levons nous !" * Whereby he meant not the truly but the apparent great. Once I knew a bald man, a man in public life, who was too old and too wise for words, very far removed from my time, and for whom I felt the respect one entertains for the genera- tion of fathers and uncles possessed of infinite wisdom and knowledge. I remember I was quite astounded when he mar- ried, and thought it hard on his wife. Now that a few years have passed I have become aware that he is not old at all, but of a mere decent and reasonable age, which quite entitles him to give his own name to his children. Moreover I have no * The great appear to ns great because we are kneeling— let us rise. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 31 longer the slightest respect — but contrariwise, a great contempt — for his public self and work. I knew also, at the same time, a thinker, who seemed to mo superior certainly to most men, but not so very greatly supe- rior. He has now so risen in my estimate that I open the rec- ords of his thought with fear and trembling lest I fail to seize it. ****** Reading a law case of the time of Edward I,, I find that be- fore the Conquest one Hugh de Longchamp — ' ' tient play de la coronne, e aveit four^es, et p7'it redempcion de genz a la raort juges, par reson deu maner^^ had pleas of the Crown, and had gallows, and took ransom of men condemned to death, by rea- son of his manor. Is it not strange that men should be found who can amass a fortune out of the blood and bone of their fellows, and who yet thoroughly believe that they have no duties to fulfil tow- ard them ? I know a good dozen who, finding themselves in a strong capitalist castle, have taken from hundreds — nay, from thousands — that lifetime of toil, which is all the toiler's wealth, and who will calmly stand by and see the executioner Hunger step in to make an end of what little life there is left in them — answering, if they be questioned, that the right of grace, if anywhere, is in the master of the workhouse. Surely, this is breaking the bargain. ****** The Thames Conservancy have a way of punishing an offend- ing master of a barge by taking a cloth out of his mainsail, which is to that extent a diminution of his sailing-power, and consequently of his profits, always felt. One passed me to- day who had scarcely any mainsail left — evidently a hardened sinner of some kind. * The Jews are the most persuasive race in the world, and I fancy that when King John pulled their teeth out one after the other, on their refusal to part with their moneys, it was in or- der to diminish the seductive flow of their speech. What 32 FLOTSAM AN^D JETSAM. now if we should take to that again ? What if we were to draw a tooth from every minister convicted, in the usual way, by a majority of the Commons, of having ill-administered his country's afiEairs ? That would in some measure replace the rusty old weapon of impeachment at which everybody laughs nowadays. For it is no longer held to be a crime in a man to betray his country for the sake of his " party " — which is the modern word for himself. To have the sky for your only philosopher — to be read as you may be able to read it — the sun, moon, and stars for your only guides, aud the sea for your only companion, is of all things the most delicious when the sky writes fair weather in plain characters, when the sun and the moon and the stars tell you clearly where you are, and when the sea is in an amiable mood. But when the sky speaks angrily, when the heavenly bodies refuse to speak at all, and the sea turns into an inveter- ate and pitiless foe — then I fear them all, and regret bitterly that I ever left my fast moorings in London. I have known men who maintained that they had never felt fear. I am not of those. I confess that whenever I see Death about me I am horribly afraid of him — and I have seen him in more than one shape, always with the same effect. But that same sinking of the heart into the boots, and the raising of it again to exertion by a mere dead determined pull, that is not without pleasure ; and the more restless — or in other words the better — kind of men have always placed their enjoyment in it. It is enough to make one believe that fear is one of the chief luxuries of life ; and, in truth, there is nothing in existence equal to the sweet- ness of sailing within an ace of the greatest possible danger and yet coming off untouched. Our great contemporary professors of religion have made a capital error in suppressing eternal torment out of their system, as all they do who admit that those of any other way of think- ing than their own can escape it. If a religion does not make FLOTSAM AN^D JETSAM. 33 you feel that it has enabled you to sail close round destruction and yet to weather it, men will content themselves with natural philosophy. CHAPTER YII. Greenwich, Monday, June 22. *' There's a lovely coffin — quite the last thing — the new High Church pattern — very stylish — polished ellum, all of it — very fine figure, too — no, not the gentleman, the wood I mean — you see this is one of those jobs that must be done, and sharp, this hot weather ; that's why I'm rather behind with yours. Very stylish, isn't it, sir?" Wherewith the joiner put his head aside, looked at his production through the screwed-up corners of his eyes, and slowly rubbed his hands one in the other as one modestly conscious of having achieved a real work of art, and content to look to posterity for his reward. I do hope nobody will put me into polished elm when I die. I would much rather somebody even raised an Albert Memorial to me ; that would at least serve as a warning-beacon to show people forever the kind of structure they should not build. I can understand a man wishing to see the immaterial part of him preserved and reproduced — that desire is the better counterpart of the desire to procreate and leave children — but the notion of making much of the material part when it has ceased to be the temple of the spirit is beyond me. ****** " A fiddle is as good as ten men on a purchase" is a re- ceived axiom on every man-of-war, and yet we are all aware that the force of a fiddle cannot be translated into any known formula of mechanics. Also there was once a man who lived to threescore years, and was at that age " made a fool of," as people said, by a lit- tle girl of seventeen ; but, as should really have been said, had 34 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. made a fool of himself in living so long and never till then finding out that he had a soul as well as a body. ****** They say you may tow a frigate with a silken hair if only you once get her started. At any rate there is a little insect of a man perched upon that huge lighter, and looking, as one would say, ridiculously incapable of producing even the small- est effect upon her, yet managing to thread his way without a touch through all this mass of shipping. Of course he has the tide with him, but that any man may have twice a day. How little can one do, or does one do — how wretched are the efforts one makes in comparison with the great thirst and eager- ness within one ! There are moments when a man feels that he could embrace the whole world in his grasp and leave the trace of his fingers all round it. Think what a little it requires after all to move this poor vacillating, nicely-balanced humanity of ours ! What a little ! A mere accident — may be even a trace of disease — in the processes of that brain tissue, a move- ment of heaven-born sympathy with one of the outside spectra, or even a grosser coupling with it of sordid self-interest — and in due course of time an idea is born that shall change the face of the earth, and even to the least incident of the smallest life of those that dwell therein. What an effect and what a cause ! Also, what a courage should not this give to the most obscure of us who would deal with the mad phenomena we have about us ! And here is such an one, with this chance open to him also, not stretching forth toward it, but gone aside into by- paths leading he knows not whither. Who and what is any individual that he should seek himself, or rather lose himself, in such strange ways ? ****** Wednesday, June 24. The Thames is the only great riv^er in the world where there are no regulations for traffic, and nobody to enforce them. This morning I saw an elephantine lighter floating up stream FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 35 without a soul on deck, and as a river policeman was passing me I pointed it out to him, and remarked, feelingly, that that was how accidents happened. " Bless you, sir ! they always do it," said he, " and we have no power to interfere, because it is the Thames Conservancy who have the control of the nav- igation." Why, then, 1 should like to know, don't they con- trol it ? or rather, why should not their business be done by the Waterman's Company, expanded and reorganized to that end ? It seems ridiculous, when there are ancient bodies al- ready in existence, to create new ones that will not do their duty. I was thinking of these things when for the second time a lighter carefully ran into me, though, thanks to my look-out, very tenderly and gently this time, and again provoked me to a free use of river-language. John Brown, the black man's hero of Harper's Ferry, when he was taken said that he was of more use for hanging than for any other purpose ; and so it proved, for it was his hanging that brought about the emancipation of the slaves. All the same, it would have been better for John Brown if it could have been effected at a less cost. ****** We have all heard yarns of shipwrecked and compassless mariners who have steered a course by a star, and got safely to port ; which sounds very well till you know that the stars, like the sun and moon, rise on one side the earth and set on the other, so that a man who steered by them would be varying his course every minute. Even the Pole-star, which is the best of them in these latitudes, varies a little. But, in fact, the stars are of no use at all unless you can correct them by the sun. We are asked to believe in and to follow our public men, on the ground that they are honest and reliable. Yet does it not appear that they are each and all of them working for their own interest — or that of their party, which is the same thing ? When you find a man of commercial spirit willing to pay large sums of money in order that he may be allowed to perform a 36 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. public duty, you may be sure it is that he means it not to be a public duty at all but a private gain of some sort, whether of dignity or of cash matters not. The great concern is to know where each of them is in his career at the given moment, and which way he is tending. Then he may be of some use to those who are capable of applying the corrections — not other- wise. * * * -^ * % A cautious foreign ambassador in London once wrote to his Court, " Some say that the Prince is dead, some say that he is not — I agree with neither of them." Some people say that the hours of drinking are too long, others that they are too short. Mr. Cross agrees with both. I have been reading some old books which give strange ac- counts of a people rich and contented, bold and law-abiding, of " vileins" who had lands and brought actions (ay, and won them) against their lords for infringement of their rights, of mean men well clad and thoroughly fed, and of nobles who kept open table for the homeless and the hungry. There was once a little island called England which seemed destined to fill the world with its name. It was inhabited by a sturdy race of men, not easy to govern, but endowed with certain noble qualities which made all mankind look upon them with respect. They owned no masters, temporal or spiritual. They had humbled France and Spain ; they had broken the power of the Papacy ; they had dethroned their own kings many a time, and bound their nobles in chains of iron. They fought for ideas — even among themselves — they carried their heads high, and their envoys walked as men of a greater stature among the " beggarly" peoples of the Continent. This was three hundred years ago — only three hundred years ; only ten generations ago — and England is now no more. An aristoc- racy contrived to invent the fiction of actual possession of the soil, then repudiated its burdens, and finally contrived to FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 37 pawn the nation to a company of adventurers as a bribe to be allowed to retain their hold over it. The " glorious Revolu- tion" was accomplished, " Parliamentary Government" was established, taxation was imposed, and thenceforward English- men at large became mere cash-paying and burden-bearing animals, to be used for the common purposes of the new alli- ance. Between the allies the bargain has been faithfully ad- hered to, and he who runs may read its results. Materially and morally, England has become a contradiction. Never did her people produce so large a proportion of the fruits of the earth, and yet never did they enjoy them so little. Enormous wealth by the side of, or rather built upon, enormous pauper- ism, the richest country in the world inhabited by the poorest people of the earth, the disgust of satiety mocking the pangs of hunger — such is the astounding spectacle that we present just now in material matters. Morally things are as bad — they could not, indeed, be much worse. All faith, all generosity is gone. The privileged, secure in their possessions, look with contempt on those noble qualities in which their privilege — or some of it — took its rise. The peer and the pedlar have com- bined against the proletarian. They will allow him to live, because without him they could not live ; but that is all. If he tries to better his condition by strikes according to all the canons of political economy, that is pronounced flat rebellion, and straightway a law is passed to curb his evil desires for food and raiment in sufficiency. If he asks for education (alas ! what education is more pregnant with teaching than that of keeping a wife and family on thirteen shillings a week I), they give him theological minerals and literary stones — just enough to make him fear the parson and honor the squire. If, in despair, he would take his two hands tg freer climes, he is told that it is his duty to starve here in case it may be worth the while of the pedlars to turn him into coin. Poor English- man ! it were well for him had he never been born. Unhap- pily he is born, and must make up his mind — such of it as is left to him — as to the attitude he means to adopt toward the 38 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. men and things of his country. Can we wonder if that atti- tude is one of discontent, distrust, and hostility ? ****** Thursday, June 25. There was an Irishman who said that he thought the moon infinitely more valuable than the sun, " because," said he, " you only have the sun in the day, when you don't want it, whereas you have the moon at night, when you do want it." Nevertheless, I feel convinced we should be in great difficulties if that ingenious piece of mechanism, the sun's lower limb, were to be taken out of the system of the universe, say for one day. Nay, even Sirius would leave a void that would be felt, for he, too, is a necessary part of the system. Idleness is the root of all newspapers. On taking them up again, after an interval of abstention, two things are clear to me. First, that I have lost absolutely nothing by losing the daily papers ; secondly, that the world to which I have come back for a time is, as represented in them, a world of lunatics. 1 find the British Parliament, charged, as we fondly believe, with the vital interests of the empire, still engaged on liquor laws and Plimsoll, the Mordaunt case revdved, a lady of Man- chester eloping with a 12th Lancer, Lord Henry Lennox laying the foundation stone of new water- works, and giving an answer about the light on the Victoria tower, the Duke of Edinburgh going to the regions of the London Docks to talk philanthropy, Mr. Burges veneering Sir Christopher Wren, and Mr. Knox sending a man to prison for a month with hard labor because a policeman does not believe his account of the way in which he became possessed of a book. Surely it must be pretty well time to go to sea again. FLOTSAM AJ^D JETSAM. 39 CHAPTER VIII. Greenwicfi, Monday, June 29. There is a barge anchored close to me, the man in charge of which must sleep sounder than any creature I ever heard of in ancient or modern history. When in the silence of the night I am quietly doing some of that work, which seems to take time in inverse proportion to its effect, I hear a voice from the shore calling " Charley," by the half-hour together, till I am fain to lay down my pen and my book, and laugh at its patient pertinacity. Charley evidently turns in early, for the serenade often begins at nine o'clock, and he seems to learn nothing from experience, for it is almost a nightly incident. There is a lullaby in small things, in ripplings of beer, in ec- clesiastical sighings, and such gentle sounds, such as seem to have sent all our national watchmen to sleep. And though one stand and shout one's lungs out, they will not hear — no, not though the existence of the city depend upon it. * * -^h ¥: * -I: Thursday, July 2. You cannot add one cubit to your stature by taking thought ; and yet we do all take thought (those of us who exist at all, and do not vegetate), and bring ourselves into the strangest contradictions. I, for instance, have taken it into my head within the last week to be devoured by the strangest mania for becoming possessed of a " master's certificate ;" wherefore I have passed the last two days at the St. Katherine's docks, en- grossed in calculating problems of navigation and nautical astronomy. It will add nothing to my stature, and I know it ; but yet I have already faced two pent-up days of meridian and exmeridian altitudes, azimuths, amplitudes, and Napier's dia- grams, and am going to face the Board of Trade knows how many more, merely for a bit of paper, which will be of no use, 40 1?L0TSAM AKD JETSAM, heavenly or earthly, to me when I get it — if I do get it — and the getting of which stands between me and the enjoyment of much decent weather and favorable wind. Yet I believe that if I don't get it, I shall be about five times as much disap- pointed as I should be if I heard that Saccharissa had run away with another woman's husband. The great secret of life is that of the relative importance of things. This also is the secret we none of us ever learn. And for various reasons, the cHief of which, perhaps, is that we none of us ever find out what we really mean to do, and that we therefore never get a standard by which to compare the rel- ative importance of two given things. If a man or a woman could only settle on a certain line of life — say that of mere physical self-satisfaction for instance — the matter would be easy. But the mischief of it is that the spirit is always pulling one way and the flesh another ; and so we most of us come to mere drifting at last. See what immense results have been achieved by those who have frankly abandoned the flesh and taken up with the spirit. Moses, Socrates, Mohammed, Fra Bartolommeo, Palissy, Newton, Swift, the Jesuits, Comte, have all moved the world in their own direction, and left a trace upon it such as will never be effaced. Why cannot we, or some of us, also make up our minds ? If those who are always lauding the triumph of science, and preaching that we have come to the end of all knowledge and all art, could be abashed, they should be by a consideration of the triumphs lying close to our hand, and which have never yet been even attempted. There is the force of the wind, for instance, immense as it is, now put to use only at sea, or if on land at all, merely for a few ridiculous mills. Then there is the irresistible power of the tidal wave — who has ever caught and bridled that ? Also there is the soul of a man, which is the strangest, grandest, and most divine of all forces. Yet the only crea- FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 41 tures who make any kind of use of it at this present time are the Pope and the Communards I ***** * I have moved my second anchor out of the bows to abaft the mast. The principal point to regard in the stability of a given ship is not, as poor Plimsoll imagines, the weight of the cargo put into her, but the manner in which it is stowed. If a light cargo be ill-stowed the ship is far more unsafe than with a heavy cargo well stowed. To replace good stowage by empty space is madness. The insane desire there now is to multiply holidays, is but another symptom of the general madness. It is an utter blunder to suppose that men do their work well in inverse pro- portion to its amount. The capacity of man for work is almost unlimited ; but then it must be work of a varying kind, each kind holding its proper place. To expect any human creature to work nine hours a day at making pins' heads is one form of insanity — to expect to relieve him by half a Saturday of stagna- tion, a Sunday of church, and eight hours at the sea-side for half a crown is another. * * * * * * A gentleman was being examined in seamanship, and was asked — " You are on a lee shore, what do you do ?" " Put the ship about, or wear her." " But your ship will neither wear nor stay. What do you do?" *' Let go the anchor." " But there is no anchorage, the ground being rocky. What do you do ?" " Let her rip." This gentleman passed. But he migRt have thrown his yards aback, and on getting sternway have let her come round on her heel — which shows that we should never absolutely give up, but work right through at whatever we are about, until we are really and finally gone without remedy. 42 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, CHAPTER IX. Greenwich, Saturday, July 4. To-day a huge, light steamer signalized herself by trying to run down the guard-ship Fisgard, a frigate built seventy years ago, distinguished in the " glorious first of June," and now put to these base uses. Failing in that she tried to come aboard of me, but finding I was one too many for her, she ran stem on into a poor little slip of a cutter-yacht anchored just below me, carried away her mast and bowsprit, ran her ashore, went ashore with her, and then getting off, steamed away re- joicing down the river. Nothing but the greatest carelessness or the greatest unhandiness on the part of the steamer's people could have brought about such an " accident," as I suppose the running-down will be called, and I hope the owner of the little cutter will be able to make her pay. He was not without fault, however, himself, for he had gone ashore and left nobody on board. Had I been in that case I should have been run down as well. Hi 5H * =i^ * * There are moments in life when the sunshine seems to be taken from the world ; when the glorious earth has no beauty left in it ; and when the very Man himself, so noble in truth, so per- verted to baseness in appearance, becomes a declared and bitter enemy. Yet it is not they who have changed, but only the eye that regards them. It is clear it must be so. The great struct- ure of many things which make up the universe is surely less likely to get out of order than the one single eye that regards them ; and if they seem to be in chaos, who shall say that it is they and not his vision that is deranged ? We all of us fancy when we meet troubles that they are greater troubles than ever were met before. It is merely because we know our own troubles better than we ever can know those of others. I never read a tragedy without smiling at it. Here is one single atom of this universe, because, forsooth, somebody has trodden FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 43 upon him, affecting to fill the whole world with his complaint — calling the gods down from heaven to bear witness to his suffering, and the whole world to weep at his misery, as though, forsooth, he were more suffering than other men. And there are those who 2oUl weep with liim in lieu of burst- ing into laughter at his impertinent assurance. His misery indeed ! — Leah's or Othello's misery or mine ! Why, if every atom is to make a cry about his misery, the world will not hold the clamor. ****** To-day another half-dozen lighters have gone athwart hawse of the Fisgard ; and watching them at it I have become aware that it arises in every case from beginning too late to count with the tide. When yet a long way off they think they have plenty of room to pull clear ; but then they go on thinking it till they find themselves close on top of the frigate, when there is nothing for it but to stop tugging and let her drive, which they do with great composure. ****** Did you ever feel that you were being tempted to do a wrong thing — I do not mean what the world says is wrong, which is nothing, but what you are convinced is wrong, which is every- thing ? Did you ever see the temptation come toward you, you knowing it for itself all the time, and then feel its persua- sion steal softly and caressingly into your soul, and become suddenly aware that you had lost the battle even before you fought ? This is very bitter, for after all we do all of us wish and intend to do what we hold to be right ; and he who knows distinctly for himself that he has failed to do that on any occa- sion, carries thenceforth forever with him the ghost of the wrong he has done — a ghost which will appear to him some- times when he least expects it. * ***** * MoNDA-Y, July 6. I have become aware, by finding the air filled even more than usual with river-language, that Greenwich holds to-day 44 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. what it is pleased to call a regatta. I presume it may be pleas- ant enough for those who are on the land, but for those whose house is on the water it merely means that there are three times as many craft running into you, holding on to you, and putting you generally to the accredited uses. Probably the Derby dog, who is annually chivied over the course, is the only creature who does not thoroughly enjoy the race. * * * * %fc * It always seems to me that the love for athletic sports is the one surviving remnant of that grand old brutal English spirit which once made us a great nation. But I suppose we shall soon have this also put down by legislation. There will be statistics in plenty to show that over-exertion is a fruitful parent of crime and disease. We shall be told of the may ac- cidents that attend boat-races, polo, cricket, running, duck- hunts, and greasy-poles, when the " lower classes" are permit- ted to indulge in them without being regulated ; and some Plimsoll will insist that outriggers shall have a freeboard of at least six feet. ****** Apropos of Plimsoll, why does that amiable enthusiast, who loves the British sailor so much that he would prevent him from going to sea, not take up the case of Greenwich Hospital ? I went over the hospital to-day, and was made so angry that on coming out I felt inclined to knock off the helmet of the policeman who stood at the gate as the representative of Gov- ernment. Here is a splendid pile, built by private subscrip- tion, endowed and given forever to the worn-out sailor, now taken from him, and turned into a cramming-shop for a few young gentlemen, while the sailor is turned adrift on fourteen shillings a week. In 1865 there were nearly three thousand sailors here, men who had spent their lives in the service of their country ; now there are scarcely more than two hundred boys coaching for examinations, who may or may not end in their serving their country. Formerly it was a centre of glori- FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. 45 ous traditions, there was not a man who had not his tale to tell ; now it is a mere nursery. The three thousand occupants were bribed to give up their home, and then it was pretended that the home was no longer the property of future occupants — which was false — and the Government has laid hands upon all the endowments which of right belong still to those future oc- cupants to all generations, and to none other ; and have seized the building for their own purposes — a piece of spoliation which is enough to make one go and commit an assault on the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the First Lord of the Admi- ralty. The hospital belongs to the worn-up sailor, and to him it ought to be restored, not only in his own interest but even more in the interests of the country. Mr. Plimsoll really ought to take it up. He would exercise his undoubtedly great power to some good if he would do this. Let him see a few old sailors, and hear what they have to say about it. ****** Tuesday, July 7. I believe in a Providence moving and acting on defined, cer- tain, invariable, beneficent laws ; which is to say, that I believe in the existence of these laws themselves, and conse- quently in the existence of any Being, by whatever name called, representing an attempt to personify those laws. But a Providence ready to break and to disregard those laws, in that I do not believe. How then must this Providence smile — if it ever does smile — to find us men always wanting to have the fox's brush cut off and handed to us without trouble, and to get rid of the pleasure of the chase, which is all that we really enjoy. If / were Providence, and were by way of conferring a benefit upon mankind, instead of diminishing the difficulties of the chase, as we are always whining f: * * * There were two trees in the Txarden of Eden, one of Life and the other of Knowledge. Is this not an assurance that knowledge is something more than the accumulation of obser- vations which inevitably and surely come with life ? Does it not teach us that every real step in knowledge is reached, not by putting one stone on the top of many others, but as by rev- elation from that other tree the fruit of which we have not in- herited ? If it be otherwise — if it be that true knowledge really is nothing more than the superposition of those kind of stones of which we all pick up one or two in the course of time, then there were not two trees, but only one. For sup- pose Eve had first eaten of the tree of Life, then she would on this assumption have certainly acquired the tree of Knowledge by the mere efflux of time. ****** " There shall be one weight and one measure," declares Magna Charta, and this indeed is the foundation of everything. Yet to this day no two kind of men — scarcely, indeed, any two men — can be brought to use the same weight and measure for the same admeasurement. Professor Huxley is held to be a clever man, yet he palpably only cares to deal in words, and has no notion of the responsi- bility a teacher incurs who gravely tosses them to the world as though they were realities. " In the early part of the last century," he says, " Society was in a state of corruption^ — bribery was the means of Government, and peculation was its reward. Four fifths of the seats in the House of Commons were notoriously for sale in one shape or another" — and so forth. He then compares the present state of things, which he 66 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. declares to be ** in many obvious respects far better tban that.'' Surely a clever man standing up to say something ought to be able to say something better than this. If Professor Huxley really thinks that Society is not now corrupt, it can only be because he does not know it, and because those who do know it will not speak out in this generation. Bribery is not less than it was the means of Government ; the only difference is that the form of the bribery has changed, while the bribe itself has been made more magnificent, being nothing less than irre- sponsible power in England. Moreover the chiefs have found means to keep the whole prize themselves ; and instead of giv- ing their followers money dovvn, they pay them in promises. The rank and file, no doubt, now get nothing or next to noth- ing, but if they are not bought, it is only because they are not worth buying, being so easy to bamboozle. As to the seats in the House of Commons not being now for sale, if Professor Huxley will produce any incarnation of supreme wisdom — say himself — to any constituency, and get him elected without money, or " inflaence," or "party" — all which, be it remem- bered, involve sale " in one shape or another" — then I will cheerfully and thankfully agree with him. CHAPTER XIV. CowES, 10th August. ** I ALWAYS speak of people as I find them" strikes me as being about the most selfish and cowardly excuse that ever stole the garb of generosity. It amounts to this : that for me there is to be no such creature as a thief who has not stolen my property, no traitor who has not betrayed me, no perjurer who has not forsworn himself to me, no adulterer who has not run away with my wife, no wickedness in the world at all un- less I have suffered by it ; that, in short, I am bound to sell FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 67 myself to the Father of Lies, and lie about all men knowing^ly — about all men, unless they have redeemed me from the necessity of so doing by inflicting upon me some injury which justifies me in avenging myself by telling the truth about them. Rather it seems to me should we beware of people as we find them, for that is usually as they are not. Claude Duval once danced a minuet on Hounslow Heath, yet many would be surprised if he were to be spoken of as an excellent dancer and no highwayman. For he is dead and gone, and it is only of the living that we are expected to tell lies. And now what terrible retribution will overtake some who are now living in this false atmosphere with the pleasant belief that the truth will never be known of them ! There is cer- tainly at this moment some Due dc St, Simon or some Walpole calmly and secretly taking notes, hereafter to be published, of these men and things that we have about us. How the readers of those notes will despise us ; how they will wonder that no hint of the truth ever escaped while such strange things as they will learn were actually being enacted ; how they will admire the reticence of those who knew them and who yet said no word ! ****** You can get eight knots an hour out of anything ; I have got that much even out of the Billy Baby. It is when you come to the extra speed that you meet the difficulty. The Alberta will steam thirteen knots with one boiler, but if now her second boiler be brought into play and the power thus ex- actly doubled, it is as much as she can do to add another two knots to the thirteen. Anybody will be indifferent honest ; but to be anything beyond demands a power of which few are possessed. I know many a man who would not be mean or ungenerous for money, few who would not for favor ; many women I know who will hate you for yourself, very few who will love you for nothing else. Few of us can be tempted to do that which we hold to be wrong by that which we don't want — those who cannot be C8 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. tempted by tLat which they do want are honest. He who fears not death is no hero, he who seeks it is no martyr ; yet there have been heroes and martyrs — most of them unknown for such. ****** 11th August. We have had for the last week " wind enough to blow the devil's horns off," as Ned says, and there is enough at this present time to carry off his tail along with them, nor do things seem likely to get better until they have been worse. Dresses are either ruined or, what amounts to the same thing, are kept out of sight ; expeditions round the island are post- poned, and persons of the highest distinction are gravely in- convenienced because no means have yet been found of thoroughly controlling and laughing at winds and waves, and because rain still continues to wet that which it touches, acting precisely as wind, waves, and rain may be presumed to have done in the uncivilized Garden of Eden. What, then, if we were all poor things after all, and small specks dusted, as it were, into the great machinery of this uni- verse ? When I see Royal Standards hoisted at the main of the Osborne and the winds and the waves taking no notice, I have a fearful misgiving and suspicion that after all it may be so. If there are powers at work in this respect which are above and beyond us, and which we cannot anyhow reach or influence, why, there may also be in other respects. Were it not then possible to suppose that even these specks obey some higher rule than that of some other speck equally subject to it — neither of them perhaps knowing any more whence it comes or whither it tends than they know of the winds ? Were it not possible to imagine that when they make projects of authority, of submission or what not, they are still and must be unable to carry them into effect, save as the unknown rule may allow ? What if we were all pretending to do that which we cannot in fact do ? Would it be true wisdom to allow an Almighty Power in the winds because they are strong enough FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 69 to blow, and to disallow it in the mind and conscience of men because they are strong enough to deceive ? ^ Jjc sp :}i :j€ :fj 12th August. I have been assured many times that the moon has nothing to do with the weather, but I don't think anything will ever make me believe it, and I have made up my mind that to-day's moon is to bring us an improvement on the very dirty state of things we have had for the Cowes week. There are some things that you may prove to demonstration, and never get them really to be accepted, for we only believe what we can, and what we can believe we believe in spite of all evidence. Indeed, the things that are most thoroughly believed are those that have the most evidence against them. The selfishness of man, the worth of money, the value of power, the place of self in the centre of the universe, the supremacy of Chance, the blindness of the Almighty, are all notions the belief in which can be easily shown to be false and ridiculous ; yet upon them men every day stake their whole life, which is a much better way of showing that they believe a thing than merely saying so. CHAPTER XV. Cowes, 15th August. In itself there is nothing so delightful, or even so improving, as communion with one's kind. Merely to look at men and women is a great pleasure in itself — to look at them under the favorable circumstances of evening lighjt, careful dress, and lawful behavior, and withal to converse with some of them, even if it be in mere prattle, is a still greater pleasure. And yet means have been found to render it the greatest trouble and the most tiresome business on earth, so that any decently intel- 70 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. ligent creature will readily prefer even solitude to society. We know each other far too little, only just enough to hate each other with difficulty, not enough to love each other with ease ; which we are certain to do on anything over five minutes' ac- quaintance. ****** 17 th August. The charm of seafaring, even when pursued in my pottering ignoble coasting way, is that for a man who has serious work on hand that he can take with him (and most serious work can be taken with one, for it is not a matter of machinery, but of thought) it offers a continual variety of employment. At sea you have your navigation and seamanship to think of, and must think of them to the exclusion of all else under pain of coming to grief; in port you can settle down again to your serious work with the knowledge that there will be nothing to interrupt or interfere with you till you telegraph for your letters. The English system of working and resting by extremes seems to me very bad and very unwise. To think that men can work at the very highest pressure all the days of the year, and that they can be refreshed and remade by a few Bank Holidays devoted to eight hours at the seaside, is a delusion. Far better would it be if the holidays were spread over the whole days of the year. The result of working time would be the same, the increase of working power would be enor- mous. For where you have overdrawn on a man's energy, you cannot balance the account by placing on the credit side a lump sum of idleness. That is as though we should eat ex- clusively for six months, and drink exclusively for the other six months of the year. What man requires is not an infrequent alternation of work and play, but a frequent alternation of oc- cupations, each of which shall be work in itself and play to the other. The excursion-trains are to me only so many melan- choly proofs that the English people at large have not learned to provide themselves with those recreative occupations which are accessible in one shape or another to the meanest and the poor- FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. "Hi est. If they had, they would not be driven to such a wretched device for filling their holidays as a whirl from one place to an- other, and a whirl back. They learn nothing by it, they enjoy nothing, and they add nothing to themselves morally or physi- cally. As for " fresh air," that is a mere delusion invented by enterprising directors, for it may be had as fresh in Kensing- ton Gardens or on Hampstead Heath as anywhere in the world. ****** August 18. The Sunday is a shockingly misrepresented day with us. People seem to imagine that those particular twenty-four hours which are embraced in that name have a character and claims different from other hours, as though we had been told that the Sabbath-day was in itself holy, instead of being jtold to '' keep" it holy, which is very different and more difficult. If there were anything holy in the Sabbath itself, it is manifest that the apostles could not have ventured to change its incidence as they did from Saturday to Sunday, nor should we have learned that it was made for man and not man for it. The real truth about it is that we are bound in an especial manner to do on that day the duty which we are also bound to do on other days, and especially to keep ourselves in a sense of the higher law, which we should never forget. The real Sabbath-breaker is the man who premeditatedly seeks to lower his intelligence and to brutalize himself by absolute inaction ; the true Sab- bath-keeper is he who so uses the first day of the week as to fit himself more truly for the work of the succeeding six. The man of sordid occupations should then seek to elevate his ideas by any means that are at hand, whether by church, by private devotion, or the improving converse of friends. For the con- verse of friends well chosen is perhaps^ the most elevating agency in life, which is one reason why we should all be care- ful so to choose them on week-days that they shall be available for Sundays. ****** We were discussing the weather this morning, and wonder- 72 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. ing whether of the two, the sky which looked threatening, or the barometer which was most encouraging, would prove right. Some of the best weather prophets were of one opinion, some of another, until at last a mere boatman declared with an un- wavering tone of authority, that *' it was all for fine weather.'^ Upon which all the prophets at once put to sea. The wise men make the fools. For whenever a fool comes to look at a wise man, he finds so little difi'erence between that man and himself that it seems barely worth while to seek for wisdom. And when he comes to look at two wise men and finds that all their wisdom only makes them disagree the more, then he feels certain that the only safety lies in absolute folly. But if now he lights upon a wise man either not wise enough or not honest enough to admit that he, too, is fallible, then the fool will stand by him to the death. ****** I remember to have seen somewhere the remark that since in all honest proceedings the child, the madman, and the absent are always allowed, when their interests are at stake, to be rep- resented by a person required to act not upon their judgment but upon his own, therefore " the people," which is always at once childish, mad, and absent, ought really to be allowed no influence over the acts of their representative. And this is true. And what must, therefore, be equally true is that when the people themselves choose one to represent them, he is not unhkely to be as they are, either childish, mad, or absent, when their interests arc at stake. We must be a wonderful nation whose representatives are never either one of those three. CHAPTER XVI. St. Peter's, Guernsey, 20th August. I THINK I never conceived so great a disgust for any place as, upon my first view, I have for this. I believe I am not FLOTSAM AKD JETSAH. 73 difficult to please. I do not hate Ratcliff Highway, I am posi- tively fond of Wapping, and even the region of Belgrave Square has some pleasant memories for me. But this place is merely revolting, and though I have been here barely two hours, I have seen more vulgarity without manliness, more ve- nality without object, more immodesty without passion, than I should have thought existed anywhere — the whole utterly un- redeemed by any spark of those higher fires which sometimes sweeten the most ignoble smoulderings. My disgust began be- fore I set foot on the shore. Of course, in a place where the paternal system of compulsory pilotage exists, I knew I should never get a pilot. No one of us on board the Billy Baby had ever been near the Channel Islands before, so to ease my con- science I hoisted my jack, and positively when I had blun- dered in my own way through the Little Russel and was in the act of dropping my anchor in these roads, a creature had the assurance to board me and to announce that he was the pilot. I promptly showed him over the side, and was doubly aggrieved to find that he had not self-respect enough even to fight the question, and that he proposed I should " give him a trifle" and say no more about it. Then I went ashore, and was im- mediately confronted by the most incredible statue of a gentle- man in the short trunks, silk tights, and buff boots of a trans- pontine villain, inscribed " Albert, Prince Consort," just as though one should write "Blanc-Bee, Esquire"; then I was reduced to dine at an hotel, and I was more hurt than ever to find that the repast was provided for and with creatures who comported themselves precisely in the same way as though they had been fashionable London people feeding themselves through two hours of boredom. I thought as I looked at them how exactly I could match them all out of the superior circles, and in the end I left them just as one linen draper's assistant was beginning, under the influence of bottled stout, to thaw to the other ; only to find, on returning to my ship, that it has already been invaded by touts for the sale of every kind of contraband produce under the sun. I shall not stay here long. ****** 74 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. St. Peter's, 21st August. The Little Russel, if we Lad no chart of it, is a charming, picturesque channel at high water, bat when the tide is out, to see all those terrible jagged rocks appear, and to remember how one came past them with a four- knot tide, suggests to one a notion of the day of judgment in a very lively manner. If any ten men in London w^ere to tell all they knew, they would blow the roofs off half the houses in Mayfair. Let any- body hold the frightful review of the secrets that have come across him in the course of even a short and ordinary life, and think what would be the result if only one or two of them were known as he knows them, and he will admire the power of absolute forgetfulness shown by people who bear themselves as though there w^ere no secrets in the world. Nor, indeed, are there so long as they remain secrets ; but it is terrible to think how many there are whose whole existence hangs upon the safe custody of a letter or the tongue of a servant. ****** Jersey, 22d August. Ned lay aloft this morning in a strong wind and a nasty sea to lace the topsail to the mast, and Tom and Bill were so un- handy at the halyards that he got into trouble with the sail be- fore he had laced two holes. He shouted to them again and again ; they did less and less what was required, and at last he, with blundering which is the mark of a smart man, dived head- long into a sea of very strong imprecations affecting their eyes and their morality. This moved them and relieved him, and in two minutes more the topsail was laced. ****** Of all the developments of faith, I think there is none at all comparable to the belief that every man has in his own ship. There never was and never will be such a vessel on the seas as this particular one that he commands or sails in. Its merits are greater merits of a greater kind than ever before were known ; its defects are only so many merits in disguise. She is FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 'j'S not a good sea-boat, but the pace she sails is inci-edible ; she is not fast, but she would drown a good many of them in a bad sea ; she won't hang to vvind, but none of them can touch her running ; she doesn't run very well, but she'll turn to wind- ward in a way that would surprise you — and so forth. I over- heard Ned impRrting to a Guernsey fisherman, in a careless way, the information that we generally got eight or ten knots out of the Billy Baby, and that we had never taken a pint of water on board, though we had been out in every kind of weather. I can quite understand the men who went to sea on a slab of marble. I am sure they held it for the finest craft that ever floated. Beliefs, I take it, are originated never in evidence, nor even on what are called reasonable grounds, but solely in their ap- parent profit. I believe in this woman because I love her, and I don't believe in any other, because I love no other. I be- lieve in my ship because I sail in her, and don't like to think she will go with me to the bottom. In each and every case the necessity or the desire for the belief is the foundation of it. If there were any apparent pleasure or profit to be derived from believing that the sun went round the earth, we should all be- lieve it most thoroughly. St. Helier's, Jersey, 22d August. *' Which do you prefer, Jersey or Guernsey ?" '' I have only been to Guernsey, and I prefer Jersey." Something of this kind must, I imagine, be at the bottom of the preference entertained by many reasonable men for infinite as compared with finite existence. They only know time, and so they prefer eternity. Perhaps, if somebody were to come back from eternity, they would prefer time. Thus I said yesterday, but now having come to Jersey, I prefer Guernsey. On the whole, if it were not for the excite- ment of picking up unknown rocks from the chart and the jumps involved in the chance of being contrariwise picked up 76 FLOTSAM A KB JETSAM. hy them, it would not be worth while to make the acquaint- ance of the Channel Islands even without a pilot. They seem to be the resort of the British rough, the rendezvous of the un- relieved excursionist, and the home of the drunkard. There is a statue of one of the Georges out of his shirt-sleeves ; there are the cheapest and nastiest cigars, spirits, and walking-sticks in Europe ; there are soldier-officers in uniform and jaunting- cars making perpetual tours round the island. If Tottenham Court Road were swept into one basket together with Seven Dials, the Haymarket, Plymouth Hard, and the Boulevard des Batignolles, and the whole were emptied on the nearest rock off the coast of Spain, the result would be Jersey. It is the kind of place to which a philosopher might come to drink him- self to death at slight expense and without any risk of regret- ting those he left behind. As for getting to it, the coast is so stuck about with rocks and the tides run so strong and so many ways at once, that nothing but a inost thorough contempt for the works of nature could give anything like confidence among them. CHAPTER XVII. Anse du Solidor, St. Malo, 25th August, 1874. As the only available pilot for St. Malo to be had in Jersey was incapably drunk, and likely to remain so for several days, I was in any case under the necessity of finding my own way here. I had no chart of the port large enough to be of any use, but I succeeded at last in buying an old one at a Jersey public-house. Its one recommendation was that it only cost sixpence, and that, although fifty-two years old, it was certain to be good for everything except new marks, since rocks don't alter like sands. Armed with this I left St. Helier's at high- water, came round the Minquiers, which even at that time FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 77 showed black heads enough above water to frighten one, and at last found myself outside that insane puzzle of rocks which makes St. Malo so difficult of approach. What with the Conchies, the Plate, the Pierre aux Normands, the Roche aux Anglais, the Crapauds du Bey, and some hundreds of other rocks, all newly marked, and all therefore only to be avoided by compass-bearings and allowance for the set of the tide, we passed rather an excited hour while winding our way through ; but the pleasure of getting through and of letting go the anchor in this charming little corner was but the greater, and the more calculated to make one forswear all pilots and their works for all time to come. On examination I find that five new lights have been lit and some sixty new marks laid down since my chart was printed ; and herein I recognize the constant policy of pilotage authorities in alt countries — which is to be continu- ally changing the marks as much as possible, so that none but their own experts shall know them. Their principle is that a stranger who doesn't take one of their pilots deserves to be lost. Anse du Solidor, 26th August. St. Malo is, I think, of all the towns I have seen, that which has most completely preserved the character of the Middle Ages. You have but to look at it from the roads to see that it is the work of a hardy race, obstinate, laborious, narrow- minded, believing, and pugnacious. The massive walls and quaint towers which gird the little rock-island on which it stands would make Von Moltke smile, and would even have been de- spised by Vauban ; but they are the enduring record of men who had more faith in what they did than to look merely to its overthrow, of men who built not in days for yery time he hauls his dredge he has done something to enrich his kind, while I who have fished all night am always obliged to confess at last that I have taken nothing. * 4s * * * * Off Cape Antifer, 8th November. I came out of Shoreham yesterday bound for Dieppe, and hoped to make d'Ailly light about midnight. But the wmd fell to a calm, and we were soon simply driving about at the mercy of these spring-tides. At four o'clock this morning, having been on deck all night so far and made nothing, I turned in for a nap, and it appears that a thick fog came on immediately after. Anyhow at half-past five I became aware of a far-off voice calling me, from thousands of miles away as it seems in sleep, and announcing " the land ;" whereupon turn- ing out at once I found that the ship had been put about, and that we were so near the shore that, though it could not be seen, I could distinctly hear the waves breaking on it. In an- other few minutes I made out through the dense fog a light which, from its size and from the way in which I knew we must have drifted with the ebb, I reckoned could be no other than Fecamp, and no farther than a couple of miles off at FLOTSAM AN-D JETSAM. 115 most. We were therefore half-way between Dieppe and Havre, and as the flood-tide was now well-nigli half done, and what little wind there was was easterly, I put the helm up and squared away for Havre. It is now midday, the fog has light- ened, but the wind is so poor that it is a mere toss-up whether we get in. I remember a friend of mine who lost his ship through leaving the deck for a sleep in the Channel, and he was very much blamed for it, by none more than by me. Pos- sibly I, too, ought to have known better. But it is very hard to keep awake all night in a calm, easy as it is in a gale — which things are an allegory if ever there was one. ****** Havre, 9th November. Certainly one of the most amusing things in life is to get up at seven o'clock, after a whole night in, and go marketing with Bill. I think the charm of it lies in this, that one comes into direct contact at first-hand with the provisions and their pro- ducers. It is impossible to take any interest in a sole that has passed through a dozen dirty tradesmen's hands, and has finally found its way with a score of other soles to the slab of a fish- monger who has nothing in common with it. But it is very different if you can buy that sole of the fisherman who caught it. You seem to be brought nearer to the sole's own existence, and can understand his having left a wife and family to regret his loss. There is no satisfaction in buying the freshest of but- ter from a lank-haired, snub-nosed cheesemonger, or the finest of fruit from a Covent Garden Jew ; there is much in dealing with the very dairy-maid who has churned the butter, and can assure you that it was made yesterday ; much in getting with your pear the testimony to its worth of the peasant wlio has known it ever since it was a blossom. TJien alone do you feel that you are face to face with a real natural product of the earth, whereas when you deal with the middle-man, or third or fourth hand, you can never divest yourself of the idea that what you are buying is not a natural product at all, but the re- sult of a cunning manufacture. 116 FLOTSAM AI^D JETSAM, Here in the market, filled from daylight with peasants bring- ing in their produce, one breathes the very air of dairies, or- chards and gardens. Pleasant, indeed, is it to walk through the stalls, rich and glorious with all the kindly fruits of the earth, spread out in their brilliant coloring as though to give an earnest that the world is grateful and lovable if we only knew it and would see it. And then I always feel so much elevated in my own estimation by the marketing itself. The science may, perhaps, be a difficult one ; but I find it easy enough. " Thirty-six sous a dozen for new-laid eggs ! Surely that is very dear." — " Mais non, monsieur." — " Very well, give them to me. Pears three sous each !" (exactly the same as I bought a week ago in Covent Garden for a shilling), " and tomatoes one sou ! Why it is ruinous ; but give me them all the same, and some potatoes and salad, and a pound of that butter. Now, Bill, will you not put the butter and eggs in the same basket as the coke ? anybody would think you had never heard the fable of the iron pot and the china pot." Whereat Bill smiles as though I had made a good joke, and takes a furtive bite at the green apple which he had dispend- iously bought as a pleasant thing to eat the first thing in the morning. The amount of apples that boy survives is marvel- lous. 9i( % 4: % H< 4: It is fearful to think how a woman or a work takes hold of a man if he will but look at them. Considered in general they are the greatest bores, the most uneducated nuisances. To make a fool of oneself for a woman, to give oneself up to a work — be it the fairest woman that ever lived, or the greatest work ever conceived — pah ! what nonsense ! Yet if you look but out of the corner of your eye, but once, the merest glance, at that one particular woman ; if you but throw the shuttle once through that warp and begin to see the pattern growing ; if you only touch lightly that work ; if once you set your hand to that plough — there is no help for you — you must go on. And the further you go the more you are identified with the FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 117 woman or the work ; until at last you are no longer at all your- self but her or it. I fear to look at any woman, or to begin any work. If one could but be as the lilies that grow and take no thought ! But once you enter the magic portals you leave all hope behind. A pair of eyes, or a blue-book, are equally fatal to your repose. Look for a moment, read for a page, and you are lost, and given over henceforth to all the warring forces that each man has within him. It is terrible to think of it. But then who shall tell the fierce delight, the pangs of painful pleasure, the stinging joys that he feels who has given himself over to the woman or the work that has taken him cap- tive ? Ah ! those moments when one grapples with the mem- ory of her, with the pith of it ! when one rises exultingly feel- ing that one has taken a hold, and walks up and down in soli- tude, knowing that one has evolved out of one's nothingness a feeling or an idea. I do not know which is the more deli- cious — to be certified that one has brought into existence a new love, or to certify to oneself, while yet no other knows it, that one has met a live idea. Yet so great is the thraldom of each, that one is sometimes tempted to think it were better to vege- tate like a cabbage than to live like a man, ****** The rage for business will one day be recognized as one of the most dangerous forms of modern folly. A big State governed by a big Government means oppression at home and aggression abroad ; a big city means immense vice and immense misery, incapable from their very extent of being dealt with ; a big corporation means enormous opportunities for jobbery ; a big manufacture means scant work ; even a big house means great waste and robbery, and great lack of service. Yet we are all for bigness, as though it were in itself a good. We applaud the " unification" of Gkvi'many, which is ef- fected by killing many small states to make one big one ; we plume ourselves over the exaggeration of London ; we take the foreigner to see the bloated workshops of Birmingham and Manchester, and show him the Grosvenor Place mansions as 118 FLOTSAM AN"D JETSAM. the highest efforts of man in the way of habitations ; while we are even now engaged in the endeavor to substitute a big London vestry for the small ones that have hitherto existed. All this is a kind of lunacy. There may be a necessity for or- ganization, and for taking away from each a part of his individ- uality to organize the whole ; but if so, it is a necessity to be deplored, not at all to be praised. And it is monstrous when, as is now the case in the centres of " civilization," it reaches the point of organizing a man out of his own existence. For a man's life is what he does, in it, and the essential point of the big system is that by it he is taken in and done for down to his smallest details. On the original plan of little communities, he drew his own water from the spring that he knew, grew and knew his own produce, fattened his own pig, brewed his own beer, made his own bread, cleaned his own doorstep, defended himself against attack, and in general lived among and through his own works, thought his own thoughts, and made of himself a separate man from all others. On the big plan he is watered and market-gardened, butchered, brewed, baked, drained, and policed all under one with thousands ; lives among and through the works of others ; is thought for by able editors ; and is merely one unit in many columns of figures. The complaint I make against all this brigading into bigness is that it so belittles the man that it brings him at last to the condition of a mere pawn, having no individuality and no existence, except as an atom in a mass of other men to be organized, enregimented, and dealt with by pure wholesale. The foundation of it all is the notion that men are not worth regarding, or dealing with, un- less you can get a large number. Yet the larger the body of men the less is each man in it, and we seem likely to go on in- creasing the brigades until we shall have brought down the in- dividual to the point of nothingness. FLOTSAM AlTD JETSAM. 119 CHAPTER XXV. Havre, l7th November. It is a terrible reflection that no one of us completely under- stands what another says to him. Perhaps I generalize hastily, but so far as I, at any rate, am concerned I find that, in read- ing with any exactitude any author who really says anything, I am continually brought up all standing by the conviction that I have not seized through the words he employs the idea that was in his mind. Then ensues a painful struggle. I read again and again the passage, or it may be the one or two words which I have failed to interpret ; I wrestle with their sense ; and often at last I am compelled to admit that I really don't get any notion of the idea that they clothe ; and even if I do think I grasp it, it is merely as a possible notion which may or may not be the true one. That may be put down to my dul- ness, but then most of us are dull ; were it otherwise we should have little need of writers to instruct us ; and the hardship of it is this — that those who are most dull, and who therefore have the greatest need of the instruction, are precisely those who have the least chance of obtaining it. In truth it cannot be otherwise ; for each one of us, if we only knew it, gives his own special idea— the result of his thinking and living, or of the want of them — to each word he uses or meets ; so that we are in general all talking a different language each to each. Were it otherwise, universal wisdom would ensue in a few gen- erations. As we are told, for men who " have all one lan- guage," *' nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do ;" but once our language confounded, we are and must be " scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth," incapable of giving or of receiving^support ; each fight- ing for his own hand and breaking his brother's head solely because he does not understand what he says. If only once we could get to understand each other we should be as the gods. But there is no danger of that ever occurring. 120 FLOTSAM AXD JETSAM. ISth November. Wlien one has few friends it is cruelly hard to lose one of them, and I fear I have lost one of my very best. A bitter experience had taught me the necessity of exercising a little gentle constraint upon the female sex wherever there are attrac- tions of any kind available beyond the dull everyday life ; and I had consequently carefully tied up the Princess of Sheba from the time we came into this port. Four days ago, however, she slipped her collar and ran ashore, and from that time to this I have not been able to obtain the slightest trace of her. I have been to the police, I have offered rewards, I have employed men to search, I have set the whole town of Havre upside down, I have had young ladies of every character and complex- ion brought to me — white, black, brindled, large, small, straight, and curly — but Sheba I have been utterly unable to find, and I begin to fear that she is lost to me forever, lured away probably by some unscrupulous gandin without respect for family ties, and perhaps taken clean off to Paris, where she will live in splendid vice, and forget, or maybe only remember to despise, her home and her friends. It really is very hard to experience a misfortune like this when one knows that one has done nothing to deserve it. Now she is lost to me, I prize her far more than I had ever sup- posed possible. I remember her little ways and even her little faults with tenderness and regret — the clever stealthiness with which she would creep down into the cabin in bad weather, and the air of candid surprise she would take when I found her asleep in her wet coat on my best cushions. I recall that par- ticular expression she knew how to put into her back at break- fast and dinner-time, the bashful yet decided protest she made when offered biscuit instead of meat, the wild races round the deck with which she would celebrate my arrival, the intrepid barkmg with which she would sometimes defend me from sleep and the ship from an imaginary enemy the night through. I think of her wistful brown eyes, of the way she would nestle up against my legs when I took a trick at the helm, and of the FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 121 thousand little acts by wliicli she revealed her eharacter and almost persuaded me that we were five and not four souls on board. I think of all this and I am aware that I have really experienced a great misfortune not to be repaired. Poor Sheba ! you will hardly find one who feels for you my affection. At least, I pray you may be happy. 4c « 4( « 4< :ic Diderot has remarked that whoever objects to the established order of things complains in effect of his own existence ; since he, such as he is, is but the product precisely of that particular order of things. In the same way a German has declared that *' Man is what he eats." Both which propositions are true and false ; for just as any given man is the product of the estab- lished order of things j!;^?/s his notion of them, so also a man is what he eats plus what he does — which greatly changes the matter. Indeed, we may go a step farther, and say that a man only exists in proportion as he contributes something from him- self to the established order of things, and is something more than what he eats. Adam only began to fulfil his destiny when he gave names to all cattle, and to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field ; that is to say, when he invested the established order of things with notions of his own. •|C 5jC 5|* JfC 5fC Tt There are many men who affect to despise the opinion of their fellows, but I have never yet found one who really did despise it. And this is natural ; for, say what we will, we all know (as, indeed, the most important and interesting things we know are precisely those we never do say) that it is mainly this opinion that makes us what we are. The great, the little, the virtuous, the vicious, the strong, the weak, are what they are by no other title than the consent of *their neighbor, and their own belief founded on that consent. If all those mem- bers of mankind of whom I have any knowledge agree in de- claring me to be great and virtuous, I have no choice but to take the appearances of greatness and virtue, even if I be the mean- 122 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. est and most vicious of men ; and by habit this grows upon me until at last I am persuaded myself of my greatness and virtue. So, equally, if you tell me I am a scoundrel — why, then, I am a scoundrel, though I should be virtue in person. And if, now, one or two of you discover and say that I am nothing of the kind, that is immaterial, and will remain of no effect at all until you have converted some section of mankind to consent generally to your discovery — and even then it is only of effect in that section. For all other sections I remain a scoundrel ; when among them I must perforce confess myself a scoundrel, and as such alone can I act. We most of us know a great man or two who is really but a miserable poor creature ; yet he is not therefore dishonest, for he has been so often told that he is great that he thoroughly believes it, and no one w^ould be more surprised than he if he were suddenly brought face to face with the demonstration that he is an impostor. ****** The whole art of getting everything consists in producing the belief that you will accept nothing. No offer is ever hon- estly made in this life that does not come arm in arm with the fear of refusal. For those who make an offer make it with the object of receiving, not of conferring, a favor. If once you let them know that the reverse is the case, you are lost for that time. If once it is suspected that you really want anything, that is precisely the thing that you will never get. I know a man who has found means to make the woman he loves believe that he thinks her a bore. But he is very clever, and he will have his reward. Havre, 19th November. For the whole of the last week there have been lying here some five-and-tweuty English fishing-boats, forced to run in for shelter, and unable to face the constant gales that have been blowing. It is a piteous sight to see these poor fellows doing down to the jetty every morning to " have a look at the FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 123 weatlier," and coming back, forced to decide that it is still impossible to go to sea. Tliey slouch about the town in their long boots, looking in at the shop-windows in a melancholy way, for they know that want of work for them means want of food. One little boat left Shoreham eight days ago with only a sovereign on board for the whole crew, and they have only food for two days more, and no money to buy more when that is gone. But they are kind and helpful, these rough men, and of sturdy independence, too. For a friend of mine offered to give them some money to help them out of their difficulty ; but they refused it, saying that they thought they could get along till the weather moderated, " and then you see, sir, we borrow off each other.'' A touching revelation, it seems to me, this of men who do not need to ask who is their neigh- bor. * * * * * * Havre, 20th November. The French have certainly the most ingenious contrivances for wasting time of any people extant. I have had to pay two and fourpence halfpenny for port and sanitary dues, and it has taken Ned and me all day to do it between us. First I went to the Custom House, where I was blandly requested to leave my register and to go to the Bureau Sanitaire. The Bureau Sanitaire I found tenanted by two functionaries playing draughts, who politely interrupted their game to ask me my names, Christian names, age, place of birth, what ray cargo was, and so forth ; all which they inscribed on a document which they directed me to take back to the Custom House to be vise. Having done this, I was instructed to go on to the Mairie, at least a mile distant. At the Mairie it took me a good half-hour to find the proper room, having discovered which I had to wait till two questions relating to t4ie armee territoriale, and one relating to a 2)ermission de mariage, were disposed of before my payment of one and fivepence halfpenny could be received. Armed now with the solemn receipt of the French Republic for that sum, I returned to the Custom House for the 124 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. third time, and after another hunt up and down wrong staircases and through wrong rooms, had the satisfaction of paying eleven- pence for port dues. Returning now to the first office, I was at last allowed to take again my papers, and therewith the per- mission to leave the port of Havre when I liked. To achieve this result I have had to walk, including staircases, a good four miles, and to hold no less than seven interviews. If, now, I had had to pay a louis, a lifetime would not, at the same rate, have sufficed for it. CHAPTER XXVI. London, 8th December. There is a kind of man who lives by making distinctions. He has no ideas of his own, but he lies in wait for the ideas of other men in order to dilute them with some trivial condition of circumstance. " Yes— but," is his ensign, and with that he commonly begins what he, and many besides, hold to be contributions to the stock of thought on any given subject. He is a man of half-tones and minor thirds, a whitewasher of cathedrals, an impertinent babbler to the gods, not compre- hending thunder. If to such an one you say, " The sun shines," he will straightway challenge you with the shade of a dunghill ; if you tell him of noble aspirations, he will tell you of bakers' bills ; if you pipe love, he dances lust ; if you sing spirit, he rejoices flesh ; if you question of the height, he an- swers from the depth. He is a critic of perspective and draw- ing, there where both have been sacrificed to conception. And the worst of him is that he has not the grace to be silent. He it is who has reduced God to dogma, and the Law to writing. He made the golden calf because he could see only with his FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 125 eyes. And he still exists to weary the very soul out of the im- patient. How long, how long ? •it * * * * * The distinguishing characteristic of the modern Englishman is his extreme dislike to telling or hearing the truth, whenever the truth is of any importance. He will tell or listen to it *' confidentially " and in secret ; indeed, then it is the only thing he really cares to hear or to tell ; but there is no trouble he will not take and no trick he will not play to avoid meeting or stating it to the dreaded third person, however proper and important it may be that the third person should know it. We all know about this wife and that minister ; but he who should tell the husband or the country what it so imports them above all to know, would be regarded as a treacherous danger- ous person. And what is so irritating is that we yet profess to be greater lovers of truth than any other people on the face of the earth. How much better would it be if we were frankly to admit ourselves to be the greatest professors of lies ! When I hear people talk of different styles and periods of art, of Cinque-cento, Renaissance, of the Barocco, the Greek, and the Italian, I am impatient. For it appears to me that the whole and the only interest lies in men, and the only thing- worth considering is the life and character of the human beings who produced these different styles as shown in tbeir works. To know them is the essential, and their fruits are only inter- esting because it is by their fruits that we do know them. Did they lead a spiritual or a merely material life ? Did they work toward a high ideal, forgetting and disregarding all else, or did they falsely betray — they the chosen exponents of it — all that is high and noble in the composition*of our nature ? That is the point, and when once that is appreciated it disposes for- ever of any attempt to reproduce or to imitate any given style of art. For in order to produce the same fruits you must have the same men. You cannot build a Gothic cathedral by simply 126 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. copying Gothic works ; what is indispensable is to have the Gothic reverence and sense of awful mystery, the Gothic fidelity and laboriousness, and the Gothic religion and superstition. Neither can you do work like Palladio's nor like Michael An- gelo's without living their life. You cannot be venal or even commercial in your ordinary life, and yet be pure and spiritual in your work. And since all artists are now venal and com- mercial it is absurd to expect from them work of any other kind, and doubly absurd to expect it in the shape of an imita- tion of the work of men who were not as they are. Nobody seems now to see that the ideal, which (when we are true to ourselves) we are all working up to, must be taken not from among, but from above and outside of mankind. When the soldier-spirit burns within a man, he thinks it sufficient to be a Napoleon ; if he is in philanthropic mood, he conceives that he may do as much as Howard ; if a statesman, he may reach as high as Sully or Pitt ; if an artist, as far as Michael Angelo; if a poet, he would emulate Dante or Shakespeare. Yet these men are themselves the proof that this is not enough. They reached at something higher than themselves ; they knew of and sought better things than ever they did — for no man atr tains to his ideal. And to reach no higher than them, is to be content to fall below them. To make what has been done the limit of what may be done, is to accept a continued and in- creasing deterioration. To do well man must aim at the Best, and the Best has never yet been done in aught. Is not this also an argument, if any were needed, to prove the necessity for that mysterious presentment of the Best which we call God ? Is not this also a sufficient reason why that Best should always be and remain mysterious and incapable of being touched, handled, and reasoned upon ? PLOTS A xM AND JETSAM. l'Z7 CHAPTER XXVII. London, loth December. An irritating, terrible, despairing feature of life is tlie eter- nal round in which the individual and the mass give each other the lie as to the very fundamental nature of things. *' I am everything," says the individual ; " there are grouped around me men, laws, conditions, incidents, past, present, and future, but they are all subordinate to me, who am in reality the one only important phenomenon that the Universe has produced." '' You lie !" replies every creature and thing in a brutal chorus ; " you are nothing, you do not exist. You a centre ! You are not even in any way necessary, much less indispensa- ble, and if you were not, none would know your place. When you fall overboard, as you must some day, the waters will close over you, and the ship will go on as before, without being aware that you who think yourself the captain have disappeared. "What you are, that we have made you, and when you are no longer, we can as readily make another if we should want such a one. Prophet, Priest, King, nay, the very Divinity in per- son though you claim to be, we reck not of you, and can match you with one as good for our purpose whenever you may disap- pear. " And the worst of it is that this is all true, and that it is nevertheless impossible for any one of us to believe it. * * * * -ft * This " vile body " of ours is indeed vile. It is the inevita- ble companion and traitor to all we do. There never was such an irritating machine as this, through which and by which alone we are condemned to work. It is like a lady's watch — always out of repair ; but far worse than a lady'* watch, because no- body has the secret of repairing it. As these machines go, I believe mme to be a pretty good one. But at the best it is always coming in at critical moments with demands for rest and fuel, and interrupting thereby, or even quite upsetting, all 128 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. the work one wishes to do with it. I can understand men breaking it out of sheer impatience. For if you force it, it will break you. Sully tells us how Henry IV. and his friends, after many days' fighting in the streets, were fain to lean up against the houses and thus rest, turn and turn about ; and I remember a Communard leader who told me that in Paris, during the last days of the fight, he was so utterly overcome by the want of sleep, that he cared not what might happen, and would even have regarded it as a happy deliverance to be set up against a wall and despatched. It is bad enough to have a soul, but really, when dispassionately regarded, it is much worse to have a body. ****** Nothing seems to me to prove more lamentably tbe extinc- tion of the race of real men, and the contemptuous indifference with which they are regarded, than the oft- repeated question, " Who is he ?" and the nature of the answer always expected to be made and always, in fact, made to it. Properly and naturally the only rational answer would be, that he is a man of such and such a kind and degree of intellect and moral quality, that he has done thus and thus and said this and this, and that his individuality and place in the world are so marked out. There is no relevant or important thing to be said out of this range. Yet nobody dreams of expecting or of giving such an answer to the question. The reply always avoids the man himself, and fastens itself exclusively on his purely accidental and incidental surroundings. He is the son of this man, who lives in that county, and has an estate near to that of the other man ; his sister married A B ; his mother was so much talked of with C D that people confuse his genealogy ; and he is very well or very ill off, as the case may be. This is, in effect, an admission that the man himself is of no importance whatever in the eyes of those who are professedly speaking of him ; or rather it is a general confession that there is no such creature as a man left remaining among us, so far as the world knows or cares to know. That there are, nevertheless^ real men in ex- FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 129 istence — that is to say, men doing real work — is probable ; but then they are mainly, and often merely, themselves ; where- fore, there is no answer possible to the question who they are ; wherefore they are nobody — which is precisely what we delight to prove. ****** The Billy Baby is at last laid up for the winter, dismantled of all her gear, with her mast painted, two coats of varnish on her deck, and Ned in charge till I can so far emancipate myself as to return to her — to my real home, where alone I feel as though I belonged more or less to myself. Ned writes me the most delicious letters, in which he mixes up the weather, the stores, the casualties at Shoreham, the desire he has to spend his first Christmas since fifteen years at home, and the breaking of two bottles of wine, in the most approved literary manner. Bill has returned to his mamma, and is probably now on his way to the Dogger Bank for a course of fishing. Tom has also gone on the same business, and without coming to see me in London, w^hich he was afraid to do for fear of being run over in the streets. This delights me as being another proof that we only really fear that with which we are not acquainted. It would seem as absurd to him to be afraid in a gale at sea, as it does to many to be afraid in a press of traffic in the Strand — yet this latter ordeal proved too much for Tom. It is very nec- essary and proper that nobody should ever have returned from Death to give an account of it — for there are those who might laugh. ****** I remember I once had a terrible interview which I certainly shall never forget ; yet when I now recall it, I am aware that into my share of it there entered no small amount of conscious acting, and that, indeed, I should have a difiScult task were I to attempt to say where the real feeling ended and the acting began. Not that I overacted what I really felt — far from it ; but that I remember that I kept all the time a conscient watch over myself rather with the intention of underacting it. In 130 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. sliort, I know now that half my appearance and words were an imposture. And this, I take it, is always true whenever a man is deeply moved ; were it otherwise he would go mad then and there. From this he is only, indeed, saved by that very intel- lectual and artistic criticism which he is making upon himself, and endeavoring to carry into force in the tone of his voice, the look of his eye, and down to the very trick and motion of foot and hand, whenever he is really moved in the presence of another. A man is never all real when he is before a second man, still less when he is before a woman. This comes not always or even often of dishonesty of purpose, but rather of the utter inadequacy of all language and all gesture to convey anything like a true impression of that confused storm which rages in him when the springs of the inner being are wrung, and the whole complex machinery is thrown into its original chaos. A man learns not to be himself all his life long ; he has painfully and by long effort clad himself in the garments prescribed for his particular condition ; how then shall he be not ashamed when he suddenly finds himself naked ? CHAPTER XXVIII. If anybody ever thought of it at all, it would be painful and humiliating indeed to think how mean and petty is our daily life, and how completely occupied with microscopic trifling. Those of us, indeed, who affect to be superior, do occasionally put on, and flaunt about for a brief hour in, some uniform of belief or of principle — to lay it off again when the hour's masking is over. But our daily thought and converse are of things of rank detail. The Parson applies himself to candlestick and vestment, the Prince to court ceremony and precedence, the Statesman to a vote, the Woman to the fash- ions ; and, meantime, the law of God, the j^lace of the Sover- FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 131 eign, the fate of the empire, and the art of dress are left unre- garded and untouched. We are always working in our little bits of colored glass, without ever thinking of verifying the design of the mosaic. Thus have we become incapable of large principles or of sustained action. And withal we fancy that we have handed over all principles to the charge of men in- vented and paid for that purpose. As though they, who are our creatures, could be any different from us. ****** There is an old lying platitude which declares that the idea, and the practical are two, and that of them the practical is the more excellent. Never was such a falsehood presented to the foolhardiness and indolence of mankind. Ideal and practical are one, and the practical only exists because and in so far as it is a realization of the ideal. What men would be, that, so far as in them lies, they are ; and conversely what they are, that they to a fuller scope would be. If now they are found striving above all to be loved and honored of their fellows, and yet to take no heed of those things which alone merit love and honor, then their ideal is that of supreme deception, the ideal of the gambler who would win even with cogged dice rather than not win at all. These are your practical men. Yet it were, perhaps, possible to conceive of another kind of man who should stand aside and, looking at the game, should reflect that he, having also those dice put into his hand, had thrown them down and had rejoiced rather to go forth a loser practically, but ideally so much the more a gainer. For, make up the accounts, and it will appear at last that of two who take each a step toward their point, he will remain uppermost whose point is above — though lie have made infinitely less progress than he whose point is below. ****** It is a fearful thing to be out of gear with the world, and he must be strongly persuaded he is right who can endure this. But how much more fearful for any to be in gear with it, and 132 FLOTSAM Al^D JETSAM. yet not quite sure that he is right ! In the one case there is only the doubt whether he is a martyr — in the other there is the doubt whether he is not a swindler. * * * * * * The meanness of this our generation is manifest in nothing more than in the craving shown to be many together to indulge in vice or corruption. It is bad enough that no man should be any longer capable of virtue without companions ; but it is worse that none should be capable of vice without abettors ; for this involves the admission that the vice is known for what it is ; that it would not be indulged unless there were too many accomplices concerned to be punished. A man hesitates to be a liar, a traitor, a thief, or a spoiler purely on his own account, and taking all his own risks ; but he will readily lie as the editor of a newspaper, betray his country in complicity with a party, steal money as the financier of a company, or remove his neighbor's landmark in the ranks of an army. Our virtues are miserable enough, but there is something incredibly mean and cowardly about our vices. Just as we fancy that if we get a few hundred fools together, the result will be a body of wise men, so we seem to think that when we follow a multitude to do evil, the evil thereby becomes good. This is the theory of the divine wisdom of majorities, in which all now believe, and by which we are governed. ****** There is a very old but very foolish craze still in existence, that men are all born to special uses ; whereas it would be much more true to say that they are mostly educated to special misuses. The notion is popular because it is pleasant, and en- ables men to make the pretence of an excuse for their own idle- ness by representing it as an infliction of Providence. They have not the talent necessary to do this, they lack the special gifts required to do that, they will tell you, and give you to understand that they are hardly used in that respect. One especial instance of this is to be found in the popular notion of FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 133 public speaking and writing, which are freely alleged, and by- many believed to be, distinct faculties given or withheld from on high ; and there are found orators and authors who support a belief which so magnifies their office. The simple truth, nevertheless, is that there is no mystery whatever in the asser- tion of conclusions, either vocally or on paper : the whole mystery lies in attaining to conclusions, which is by no means a gift reserved to a few, but the result of labor, open to all who will pay that price for it. The whole is done when the price is paid ; neither is there anything else at all worthy of being regarded. If you would see the real prophet, poet, statesman, artist, or orator — that is to say, one who in any of these char- acters has reached any conclusion — you will find him in the solitary man struggling and wrestling with his work, failing, falling, letting the oar fall from his grasp and coming to it again painfully, perhaps reluctantly, and always with distrust of his strength, the while there is none by to cheer and encour- age him, no applause, no result even apparent, nor any present hope of a result. What he then can do in the silence and darkness, that he is ; and he is but a pale reflex and imitation of that when he stands forth only to show his work. Yet this, the least part and the merest incident of his business, is alone regarded and treated as though it were the whole. They turn with disgust from him while he is running the race ; and when he wins the prize they go about exclaiming that it is a gift. CHAPTER XXIX. . Of all the feelings a man can experience,* I should think the bitterest, the most humiliating, and the nearest of any to des- peration, is that which takes him by the throat with soft grip- ping invisible yet resistless fingers, when he has had what is called a success in that particular department of life to which 134 FLOTSAM AXD JETSAM. lie has for the moment addressed himself. The wealth he has labored for is at last in his grasp, and all the pleasures and the powers it can command rise up to salute him ; the woman he has loved at last owns the spell, and falls into his arms ; the heaven-born principle he has discovered and revealed is at last accepted, and the universal crowd call him master ; the heathen are converted at last, and own him to be the true prophet : he has fought the fight and conquered. And then, even while the crown is being placed upon his head, then it is that he must fatally look in upon himself and know that he is a miserable impostor. Then in bitterness of soul he first real- izes that the wealth is not truly his ; that he is not indeed the man whom that woman takes him to be and loves ; that the principle he has preached is not heaven-born or of his discov- ery ; that he is no revealer, no prophet, nothing of all he is taken for, and no true possessor of the rewards attributed to him. If a successful man could be found to speak the truth at such a moment, he would say, " Madam, or gentlemen, you are all fools and I am a swindler. ' ' ****** The pangs of despised love are so universal a theme with those who would move the feelings even of this our well- dressed and well-disciplined generation, that I am tempted to believe most men and women have that skeleton in one of their closets. I have indeed known — we all have — many instances of it, and I have observed that the despising of love com- monly arises from the fact that the despised one has sought to mate unequally. We are all so unequal in every way when we arrive at the age for " falling in love," that it is a nice and difficult matter to find two persons who are exactly worth each other ; and this present difficulty is still further increased by the idea of what each feels capable of working out in the fu- ture ; besides which the whole is infinitely exaggerated and dis- torted by vanity, and by the small circle of opinion which each indi\ddual regards as the true measure of all things. Thus, without taking into consideration differences of rank and for- FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 135 tune — which, nevertheless, are to be considered — we find that when each reduces his or her moral, intellectual, and physical qualities to a common denominator, and adds them together, the sums total will be infinitely .various. And now comes the history of the despised one, which is usually this — that A, hav- ing made the calculation for self and B, and seeing B to pos- sess the superior capital, offers to go into partnership. B de- clines, and A remains one of the despised, and thenceforth fills the air with shrieks, as though B had done wrongfully to decline a bad bargain, and shamefully to look at it so far as to judge of its goodness or badness. ***** * I once went to a theatre in Madrid to see a new piece played by actors and actresses none of w^iom I knew by sight. I had a playbill with the names of the actors and the names of the characters in the play ; but I found it absolutely impossible to match any one of the parts to any one of the players, the author having omitted that occasional mention of names which commonly affords the clue in such a case. So that to this day I don't know which character was the virtuous young man, which the foolish husband, or which the villain and arch- con- spirator, neither have I any idea which of the actors severally played the parts. I am always reminded of this when I reflect upon that per- petual comedy of politics which is played for our behoof. We all very readily see in it some virtue, more folly, and much villany. We know that there exist such people (for our play- bill-newspaper tells us so) as Disraeli, a minister of state ; Lord Derby, a diplomat ; Gladstone, a banished noble (rival of Dis- raeli) ; Gortschakoff and Bismarck, friends of numanity and champions of the oppressed ; MacMahon, a soldier of fortune ; Pius IX., a sovereign pontiff ; besides bravoes, peasants, con- spirators, and crowds, undistinguished. But which is which is more than any of us can make out. That man on the stage has just robbed the church. The fact is clear, for we have seen it. But is it Bismarck or Pius IX. who has so done ? Those 136 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. others have hauled down a glorious banner and trampled upon it. Is Gladstone one of them, or is it Disraeli, or is it only the " Crowd" ? Here, again, is a plan for murdering and plundering an unsuspecting female. Are those men Gortschakoff and Bismarck, or merely two " conspirators" ? It is impossi- ble to tell. Unless, indeed, one first knew the real off-the- stage Disraeli, Gladstone, Gortschakoff, and Bismarck : then it were easy to recognize them even through their paint and their comedy-dress. Or even if one knew but one only of them one might by a process of elimination get at the others as the piece went on. But we do not and cannot know ; those who do know will not tell ; and as each act of the comedy closes we lift up our hands in astonishment, and let them fall in despair at the pitiful things, done by we know not whom. * -^ * * * * I believe our habit of interjectional conversation — the habit of flinging out a notion haphazard and leaving it there to take its chance — to be not merely the effect but also to a large ex- tent the cause of our lamentable laxity of thought. The cur- rent notion of conversation is satisfied by an interchange of short sentences, just suflBcient to carry a " view" or an " opin- ion ;" while it never enters anybody's head so much as to at- tempt an exhaustive statement leading to a reasonable conclu- sion, on any point. The reason of which is that scarcely any will take the trouble to collect the first elements required for a conclusion. Those who have taken that trouble cannot resolve the work into half a dozen words, if they would be intelligible. Perhaps a day will come when we shall see that the only excuse a man can have for saying anything is that he is able to say something — then, perhaps, we shall not be so impatient of giv- ing him the time to say it. % % % ^ % * Two doctrines always amuse me : that in order to be rich a man must save money, and that in order to be wise he must learn much. In reality the reverse is the truth. The measure FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 137 of H man's wealth is not what he saves, bat what he spends ; the rest, which is merely what he may spend some day, is not yet and possibly never may be his. So also the measure of his wisdom is not at all what he knows, but what he dares outside his knowledge. That which he has learned is not his nor any part of him, but only that which he conjectures, supposes, and believes beyond it. The essential part of Columbus was not the knowledi^e he got from Ptolemy, Marco Polo, and Sir John Mandeville, but his bold belief that by sailing into the west he should discover a great continent. But, then, Columbus is well known to have been mad. CHAPTER XXX. What is it, then, that a man loves (as the word is) in a wo- man ? What is it that is so powerful as to make him give up all his approved beliefs, all his tried methods and principles, and deliver himself over to inconsequence and ridicule on a hint from that woman ? Assuredly it is not beauty, nor wit, nor wisdom, still less goodness or virtue of any kind ; for she may have none of these things, and be none the less powerful with him. What is it, then, that the man loves ? Speaking diffidently, and as one who only knows what he has been told, I should say that what he loves is — himself. It is not that he is blind to the defects and deformities of that woman, still less that he believes them to be beauties, and has therefore argued himself reasonably, even if from false prem- ises, into his " love " for her. Not at all. It is that that particular woman has found or chanced upon the kind of flat- tery he most loves ; that she has served it up to him in the most insinuating and unsuspected form ; and that he, as often as not unconsciously, has resolved to justify her, and to secure a constant repetition of that delicious testimony to himself 138 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. wliicli she is ready to afford. By a word, by a look, by a ges- ture, she has in the first instance conveyed to him that she has seen and acknowledged that particular great quality of his ; this she has subsequently confirmed, and so long as she adheres to it the man is her slave. Now, women will readily continue to play upon that responsive chord, even after they have found out and laughed at the falsity of its note. For they, too, in love chiefly love themselves, and they get flattery for flattery. Yet, if one of them should tire of the comedy or should be- come aware that she can do better elsewhere with an equally small investment — and if at the same time the man fails to sup- ply himself immediately with the one desire of his soul — then he breaks out into bitter lamentation on the falsity of women. Sometimes it is their falsity of which he complains ; but as often as not it is of their return to truth, and the cessation of their ministration to his own false appetite. Palazzo Blanc-Bec, London, Tuesday, February 2. I am going through a fearful experience and yet not an unin- teresting one, for if one always finds something in the misfor- tunes of ones best friends that is not displeasing, one finds the same in one's own. My experience is that I am trying to get into a new house, and so far signally failing. I had been months about it ; I had conceived ideas and made plans for its fitting up and furnishing which, small as it is, were to make it the one only bachelor's house in London. I had made drawings in and out of per- spective of all the novelties ; I had met, and as I thought van- quished, the difficulties always incident to the new thing ; I had settled that I would have no gas, no coal, and no paper in the house, and had contrived all my methods of lighting by wax, heating by wood, and hanging with stuffs. I had preached all this as a new religion to an eminent upholsterer — and now, when I come back from foreign parts expecting to find all ready, I discover myself to be in the most desolate and FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 139 melancholy desert ever seen since tlie time of Moses. I am sitting in the midst of a hopeless mass of furniture, which looks as if a sliipwreck had just taken place of all my house- hold gods, and am trying to smile. Of my two servants, one (the man of course) has deserted me, and gone I know not whither, and I only wonder I do not myself think it impossible to sleep here in the fairy palace I had contrived for myself. I am reminded of the rich man in the ancient writing who laid up much store for himself only to learn that that night his soul would be required of him. ****** Wednesday. My male servant has definitely disinherited me. He met Rosine this morning, and informed her that his self-respect and regard for his health would not permit hira to sleep in a recently painted and white-washed room, and that he did not intend to come back. Considering that he was lately a trooper of Household Cavalry, and therefore presumably a soldier not careful of small discomforts, I receive this as a compliment to my own gigantic powers of endurance, who have just slept in such a room. Also I have telegraphed for Ned to leave the Billy Baby, and to come up and take me under his protection. Him I know I can rely upon at any rate, and if I had but Bill too I think I should feel quite easy. But this furniture is a great cross to bear. There seems enough to furnish Bucking- ham Palace in the middle of each room. All the fireplaces are wrong, being in that stage of alteration when it is impossible to burn coals in them any longer, and not yet possible to burn wood. We can't find any of the candlesticks, a damp place has declared itself in the dining-room, all the chimneys want sweeping, and none of the locks, cocks, taps, bolts, or bars will work. * ****** Wednesday Evening. Ned has arrived, and I am saved. The furniture and books are all more hopeless than ever, in consequence of their having 140 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. been partially arranged, and the fireplaces are much in the same state ; but now I have two people who mean business and make the best of things. I have taken solemn possession of my palace by dining at home. It has been a matter of some contrivance. Ned went out and bought everything as the want occurred. Rosine turned out a perfect little repast, which justifies that reputation for a '* honne cuisine hourgeois^^ on which I took her, and I am once more happy in the midst of chaos. As for Ned, he is radiant with delight at being up in London town, and active and ready as ever, while he regards his room (the room which the household trooper rejected) as a dream almost too magnificent to be real. ****** I fancy that the importance given to such material surround- ings as furniture, books, and " comforts" generally, is a pure invention as well as an innovation. Any man ought to be happy with a table, an inkstand, a pen, and a sheet of paper. It is not the things but the people about him that affect him in any important way. And those of old times were right who made it their object to have retainers rather than goods, and thus showed that they preferred troops of friends to heaps of furniture. ****** Rosine says that Ned is a marine monster, that he knows nothing, and can't even speak in pantomime, and that she doesn't know what to do with him. / shall go to bed. CHAPTER XXXI. An honest plagiarist is the most effectual work of God. He it is who having had the top rail broken by the original thinker makes the gap through which all the other sheep pass, and he is entitled to all the real credit for having adopted, assimilated, FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 141 and made muscle out of the original idea, because it is not his own. To love one's own children is an easy virtue — being, in- deed, only a kind of conceit ; but to adopt the children of others out of the gutter, and to set them on thrones till the elders blow trumpets before them — this is not so easy, and is by so much the more praiseworthy. And this also is to be re- marked, that it is the plagiarist and not the original man who does the work ; it is not John the Baptist, who was right from the beginning, but Saul who first distinguished himself by ston- ing the prophets. For the plagiarist also adds something of his own to the original idea — no idea can pass through the human mind without having something added — little, per- haps, but often precisely that little which was required to stamp the original gold as current coin. There are not more than half a dozen original ideas conceived in a generation ; and since we cannot all be the first to conceive them, it were best we should most of us at the least adopt one, and provide it with food and raiment. ****** There is only one science, properly to be so called, which is that of relativity. To know the part that a given man, thing, principle, virtue, or vice plays in the world is to know all that is to be known about that. And it is precisely what most men never do know. To hit upon the relatively impor- tant by chance is talent ; to choose it by conscious choice, and to reject for it the relatively unimportant, is ability ; to give to the important its due place, and yet to retain the power of treating the unimportant, is reserved for genius. I recognize genius in Napoleon (I mean, of course, that Napoleon who had the honor of being the uncle of his nephew) when I find him dealing fully with the subject of gaiters and harness. ******* There is nothing, perhaps, which so clearly indicates and measures the great decline of those finer and higher feelings which men of race are supposed to possess (and which they 142 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. should possess if tliey are not impostors) than this custom which has arisen of selling a noble or a gentle name for money. To do this is, besides being a flagrant breach of faith, a kind of social blasphemy, and a distinct act of social prostitution. Here is one who has inherited a great name, representing great traditions, and carrying with it equally great obligations. It is assumed by all men that he who bears that name cannot lie, or cheat, or descend to mean things ; that wherever it is found it is a tower of strength, and a sure guarantee of truth and honesty. Yet there is sometimes — nay, there is often — found a man, who, possessing such a name, makes no scruple of selling it to the first adventurer who will bid for it to ticket his wares withal. And if it be found that the wares are false, the gentleman who has given his name as their warranty thinks it enough to reply that he did not know it, as though the name itself were not a pledge given that he did know. A name of the so-called " influential" kind, whether made or in- herited by its possessor, is a pledge of honesty and truth, and of the knowledge required to substantiate truth and honesty, which should only be given when it can be redeemed ; and he who gives it otherwise is the worst kind of social swindler, far worse than the dealer in any other kind of base coin. ****** I admire the foolhardy way in which men fall into love, as it is called. It is like the letting out of water. They begin with a mere idea of amusing themselves, and go on mostly with the same notion — till one day they wake up and find that there is a woman who can add ten years to their life whenever she chooses ; that for them the relative importance of things has been fundamentally changed, and that there is a certain little creature in the world whose moods and acts, whose fancies and follies have suddenly discovered themselves to be of greater consequence than all those weighty matters hitherto known to be such. They scarcely admit it to themselves, they will very hardly admit it to anybody else, and only with reluctance, perhaps, to the little creature herself ; but they FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 143 know from their own incomprehensible acts that the whole of their phm is thrown out of perspective, and that at any moment they may be deprived of their sleep, their digestion, and all their earthly happiness through a mere whim of a fool- ish woman. And the amusing part of it is that, when this happens, instead of taking warning from it never to fall into that trap again, they have but one object, which is to fasten it once more securely round their leg. It is lucky for us we are all such fools, or we should very soon get tired of ourselves, which at present is not a common failing. CHAPTER XXXII. Truly God is good. And those who would know it have only to be out and about this beautiful country of ours early one of these winter mornings. I think there is nothing, for those who will but look at it and take it in, that more surely lifts up the heart in thanksgiving. Do look at it with me. Those warm, russet, velvety expanses of plough, so soft you could bury your nose in them as a child does in his mother's breast ; those green fields lying along the flanks of the hills, so delicately powdered with hoar-frost ; those rich brown hedge- rows and trees, echelonned into the distance, and taking from the air each one its particular " value" of color ; that white road that curves over the shoulder of the declivity, and carries away with it the slowest imagination ; and over all that deli- cious soft gray sky, unlit by the sun, yet enriching all things with tender coloring ; do not they all turn heavenw^ard their faces with an unceasing and ever- varying chorus of praise ? and can you and I refrain from joining in it ? Shall we not rather the more readily and certainly joinin it than we do in the gar- ish summer, now that we see, as it were, the mere skeletons of things, and behold that they also are very good ? And shall 144 FLOTSAM AI5"D JETSAM. we not, when we come to think of that, be ashamed that there are times when we pass by and see no beauty in them ? * * * 4t * * It is a curious notion, that which all people seem to enter- tain, that they are living at the end of the world. It is often said and written, in form direct and indirect, that we owe re- spect and reverence to the ages that have preceded us, which are presented besides as affording the most useful examples for our good guidance. And rightly so. But do we not also owe much — nay much more — to the ages that are to follow ? Do we not at least owe as much to these as we have received from those, in the way of example, and is not our responsibil- ity to them on the whole much greater ? From antiquity we receive advantages, to posterity we owe duties. For nothing that we do is without its effect on the times to come. All our acts are imposed upon our successors with a resistless force ; he who plants a tree endows them with its good or evil fruit ; and those who doubt whether that fruit must necessarily be eaten, have but to recall the numberless times and ways in which they have been brought up, all standing, by a wall they have found ready built, and which, do all they will, they can- not overturn. True in physical, this is even more true in moral concerns. He who launches a false idea imposes on men to come a false belief and false conduct ; and yet there are many who will launch it, knowing it to be false, for the mere sake of what they wrongly suppose to be their own im- mediate gain, and still more who will launch it without asking whether it be true or false. On such the curse of all genera- tions must fall. ****** Most men, and women too, fail, I believe, to come into the foremost rank among their fellows, not because it is so diflScult to win the first place as because it is so easy to win a second. Seeing this early in the race, as all must see it who are in the race at all, they run for the second, and only too late become FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. 145 aware that they too were capable of winning the first. It is so inviting, when you have started and are pulling yourself together for a desperate struggle, to see a hand held out to you offering a crown of any kind, and a seat of honor of any dignity ; and the major part, looking to the length of the course, have not strength to resist the temptation, and so throw away their chance. Many a statesman, who might have won imperishable glory for himself and his country, has been lured away by an under-secretaryship or a party leadership of first or second order ; many a woman who might have been a pattern of true womanhood has been tempted by a *' position" to be- come one of the common pattern. ****** Formerly it was the man who did great things who was honored, now it is the man who talks great things ; as though talk were of any possible value whatever, except in so far as it indicates or provokes to action ; or as though the tree should be judged, not by its fraits, but by the noise of the wind that blows through it. Yet to talk well is held to be a great gift in itself, and men are chosen for no other reason than this to be the rulers of states and the arbiters of human destinies. That is, indeed, the essence of what is called parliamentary government — from which the Lord deliver us ! ****** To be above fortune and superior to care is, I believe, even still admitted to be the ideal state to which man should tend. Nevertheless, the only notion now current of reaching it is, that a man should increase those possessions which are the most exposed to fortune and the most fruitful sources of care. To gain money, respect, troops of acquaintance with hat in hand, is held to be the business of every creature ; and it is forgotten that exactly in proportion as he succeeds, so does he increase his vulnerability to the attacks from without. The distinction between him who has everything and him who has nothing is, that the former is everywhere vulnerable and the 146 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. latter nowhere ; that the former cannot change but for the worse, and the latter only for the better. Is this, therefore, to say that we are to seek nothing ? By no means. But it is to say that we are to seek nothing that any can take away from us ; that we are to work for neither money, respect, nor any of the prizes exposed, but only for the true secret internal tes- timony of our own conscience that we have done well ; the which, as none can give it, so none can take it away. This is thoroughly old, and therefore entirely new. CHAPTER XXXIII. There are many things at which I always laugh heartily within myself, and at which, if I were the strong man armed, the prophet, or the martyr, I should laugh outright. One of these is the notion that England is a ** free" country, when in reality we all well know, and most of us act upon the knowl- edge, that it is free only to such as hang upon the cha,riot wheels of the powers that be. It is free to anybody to do or to say anything that is already generally or partially admitted in good society ; it is free to him to say that Mr. Disraeli is wrong or right in his policy, that Mr. Whalley is a lunatic. Dr. Kenealy an obnoxious creature, and Mr. Mitchel a traitor ; but let him only say the entirely new thing, or in other words that which has not yet been received, and he will be stoned, as was Saint Stephen, and as all pioneers have been. There is, indeed, an exception to this, which is, that any, even the new thing, may be said, if only it be said ineffectually, in such a way and with such a voice that it cannot get into men's ears. In short, you may in England say what you like provided nobody listens to you, and do what you like provided nobody follows you. That is the measure of English freedom. FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. 147 Another thing that amuses me is, to see that, in spite of Jeremy Bentham and other barefaced apostles of the principle so called of self-interest ill -understood, we do, all of us, to this day, expect and look to all men, other than ourselves, for acts dictated by quite other and opposite motives. We do expect our judges to be above bribes, the safe taking of which is abso- lutely dictated by self-interest ; we do expect our ministers to be patriotic rather than partisan ; we claim that even the tradesman shall be ** honest," that is, shall be faithful to his word at the cost of profit. We claim that each of them shall, and we often go so far as to assume that they will, act upon this sentiment, this breath, this notion, that there is something more binding upon them than the desire to win as much as they can for themselves from the rest of mankind. And yet we each claim for ourselves that we alone may act quite unscn- timentally and wholly selfishly. Is this not truly risible, if there were left in us any sense of humor — which, indeed, is but the sense of congruity ? ****** It is strange enough that as soon as we come to be alone, we always admit ourselves to be much smaller people than such as we present ourselves to the world. This prince or that noble or statesman produces himself to the universe at large as though he were the inhabitant of splendid saloons, clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day. But when the universe at large is not there, he is found living in a back parlor, clad in a second-hand shooting-coat, and dining off a chop cooked by the kitchenmaid, washed down by a pint of his third-class claret. Yet if there be anything in the ap- purtenances with which he furnishes himself for presentation in the face of the universe it, is surprising indeed he should himself alone abandon the enjoyment of them. I should ex- pect to see him, most of all when alone, surrounded by those his attributes, if indeed they are his attributes. I should ex- pect to find him living in the best drawing-room, with all the lights lit, dining with his score of lackeys and calling on his 148 FLOTSAM AlfD JETSAM. cordon bleu, and his butler, for their highest efforts. But then, perhaps, there is 7iot anything in them, or perhaps they are not his proper attributes, but only an affectation reserved for the outsider. '* Messieurs de la Maison du Roi, assurez vos chapeaux ; nous avons I'honneur de charger." Such was the formula with which the Household Cavalry of the Grand Monarch were hurled into battle ; and, ridiculous as it may seem to some, it indicated that the troopers thus ad- dressed were gentlemen, fighting for what they called honor, which, whatever it may have been, was better than what we call " pay and advantages," or what other nations call con- scription. If we knew it, perhaps, we should rather envy than affect to laugh at those who could be addressed as though they were taking the lives of their fellows for something to them in- telligible ; for it is more than can be said of any soldiers during these last hundred years. To these no appeal is made — not even to their prejudices — neither is any reason presented to them. It is said by some leader of a faction, or mere chief of a conspiracy, '* Thou shalt kill," and straightway each of them kills and holds himself innocent. CHAPTER XXXIV. It is not so much that nothing is what it professes to be, as that everything is the contrary of what it professes to be ; that paradox is received for truth, and truth treated as paradox. Take anything you please — say wisdom itself. What is wis- dom ? Nought else but that which is approved as such by the general consent of mankind. Else it may be that madmen are wise, notwithstanding that mankind shuts them up and puts FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 149 strait-waistcoats upon them. But now those who have been thus admitted to be wise have united in declaring tliat mankind in general are fools ; so that these wise ones themselves only hold their wisdom by the suffrage of fools, that is, by a title which is of no avail. Whence it follows, that wisdom, so called, is likely to be folly after all — which is true. Or take '* progress," that word which we all have in our mouth as representing something excellent. What is it ? What else than change, which is death as well as life ? So far as I can make out, it means coal, gas, railways, machinery, electric telegraphs, parliamentary government, universality of taxation, centralization — or, as it is called, unity of govern- ment. Well and good, if these were improvements, as is as- sumed ; but are they not exactly the reverse ? And are not those of us who think found coming back, whenever they can, and as a mere matter of profit, to the practice of the times before progress was ? Has it not by these been imagined that it is better to burn wood than coal ; to use oil than gas ; to ride than to steam ; to have the diverse and always human fruits of manual labor rather than the always similar and in- human results of the machine ; to wait for handwriting, or even for speech, rather than be content with the telegram ; to have governors amenable to the State, rather than factionists responsible to a party ; to have the rich pay the taxes out of that they have, rather than the poor out of that they have not ; to multiply centres of power, rather than to diminish and unite them ? And if all this be true, is not progress rather a curse than a blessing ? As for me, I never see a gas-chandelier (so called), travel on a railway, recognize the product of a machine, receive a telegram, read the words of a parliamentarian, pay a tax, or submit to a hard and fast general statute, but I feel in- clined to abuse the " progress" which has given us all these blessings. ****** It has been said that the object of a man's life should be to do all things well and one thing better than any other man. 150 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. Yet that seems to present the most lamentable and most humil- iating notion possible of the ideal man. It amounts to this, that he is to exist for the gallery ; that he is to do all things so as to avoid their contempt, and one thing so as to excite their admiration. Whereas it seems to me, that whenever and so soon as a man at all regards the gallery he is lost, and has ut- terly renounced all his chance of separate existence, which is to say all his chances of any existence whatever. He himself, and not any other body, is his own judge, and unless he can bring himself before his own tribunal and establish that by its laws he has done all things well — nay, and all things better than anybody else — he is a failure and a mere imitation man. No doubt we all know that that is precisely what we are ; but that does not go to say that that is what we should all seek to be. God forbid ! ****** There are many who in these days believe, not only that the greater number of Englishmen are thieves, but that thieving is excusable, if not defensible, whenever a fair opportunity is given for it. The doctrine, indeed, is not put into that form — but into this, which, however, amounts to exactly the same thing : that it is criminal to expose people to the *' tempta- tion" to thieve, or in other words to afford them the opportu- nity ; and even scarcely less criminal not to make thieving im- possible. All which amounts to this ; that the desire to steal is a natural and fair operation of natural instincts ; whence, if it be so, this follows also : that the desire to conserve " prop- erty" is an unnatural instinct. And this indeed is so far believed that the Deputy Chairman of the Surrey Sessions has " concurred" in the *' denunciation of the practice of tempting the poor by the exposure of articles," and declared it to be " a great temptation to expose goods in the manner constantly done. ' ' It may as well be said that it is a great temptation to a deputy chairman to talk arrant nonsense. Either the princi- ple of property is respectable and ought to be respected, or it is damnable and a robbery, as Proudhon declared it. In the FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 15X former case exposure of it to attack furnishes no excuse for its violation ; in the latter the most complete material defence of it can furnish no argument for its maintenance. CHAPTER XXXY. Sitting in the stalls of a theatre the other night I observed a lad}^ next me lean forward and examine a shawl-cloak belong- ing to the lady in front of her. Having glanced at it an in- stant she leaned back again, and turning to her companion, said, with that look of scorn and disgust which the female face alone can construct, " Paisley !" whereat they both smiled contempt- uously. Why, then, was this shawl less admirable for being Paisley than it would have been had it been a true Kashmir ? Mainly because the one is machine and the other man-made. The results of the two Qiethods of making are indeed very differ- ent, for the Paisley — spite of the " progress" it represents — can never give the same rich yet soft blending of colors, or the same interesting accidents of design. Yet to those who look to regularity in design and execution (as though that were of any value apart from proportion) the Paisley product should ap- pear the preferable. It does not, however, so appear, even to these ; and the only reason, if you come to look into it and to find it, is, that the Paisley shawl brings you only mediately into contact with the human being who made it, while the Kashmir brings you into the contact immediately. Turn it up and you will see where the cunning needle has crossed and re- crossed those delicate silken fibres ; you seem to assist at the long, unwearied, loving labor that has been spent over it, to follow the dusky travailer through the intricacies of the design, and to sympathize even with those little faiUngs to follow it out which here and there you trace. The Paisley machine makes 152 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. you a hundred thousand shawls of the same pattern, and all alike ; the Kashmir embroiderer may make ten, and all unlike, yet more like the original than the Paisley for having kept the intention, if they have lost part of the form. Who would, or who, however " progressive," could, value the hundred thou- sandth part of the life of a machine as he would the tenth part of the life of a man ? I remember one who said that he loved men too well to care for dogs. No doubt this was a lunatic, for I always meet a score of persons who care much for one dog, to one who cares any- thing for the whole of mankind. The tyranny of the dog, in fact, is fearful. The whole of one's life has to be regulated by its requirements. I have one consumed by two delusions : that a looking-glass can be drunk like water, because she can see her- self in it as she can in water, and that vehicles of all kinds are capable of being immediately stopped by running after and barking at their hind-wheels. And whereas I believe that I take her out in order to run after me, she believes that I take her out in order to run after her. Nevertheless, as she is the only one of her sex I have ever been able to get to live with me on any terms, and as she humors my weaknesses, I am de- voted to her, and do run when she insists upon it. I believe the real reason why one prefers dogs to human beings is that they have little sense of, and no memory for, injustice. * * * '^ * * It was one of the ten wishes of Henry IV. of France to re- duce all the religions of Europe to three only, the result of which he believed would be that Europeans would be less divided. In this I believe him to have been thoroughly wrong, as, indeed, every man must be who would rearrange the world on notions derived from an earnest contemplation of his own interests. The form of religion is somewhat a matter of cli- mate and temperament, and no form of it can gain a perma- nent hold that is not suitable to the locality and the people to FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 153 whom it is presented. The desirable thing, therefore, is, not that forms of religion should be diminished, but that they should be increased in number and variety ; until, if it be pos- sible, every tongue and every nation may possess a sufficient number to cover the belief- capability of every individual in it. For what is essential is, that every man should thoroughly possess those beliefs that are called religious. And this, be it observed, does not touch true religion itself, of which the basis is always the same in whatever form or through whatever dog- mas it is conveyed. It would be well if men were not driven to the last desperate resort of irreligion by finding no form of religion which they can receive — which will never be, until the professors recognize that form is of no moment. But then the professors live by the form, ****** I -saw a man to-day pass by a beggar with a contemptuous pitiless glance ; and I said to myself that, considering how many hard men and armor-cased with political economy there are in the world, the beggar's trade must be a poor one. When the hard man had gone a little way, he stopped, frown- ed, put his hand in his pocket, and drawing thence a sixpence went back and gave it to the beggar — upon which I saw that I was a fool. The thought of the hard man had clearly gone through several stages : first disgust, then toleration, then pity, and, finally, fellow-feeling must have moved him, all in half a dozen paces ; or perhaps it were more correct to say that he had felt none of these truly, and maybe least of all that on which he finally acted ; for if he had, he could not thus have successively abandoned each one for another, or so quickly have faced clean about. But it is enough to show that the final acts of men like him — which make up the history of the world — are not to be guessed at or predicted from aught they may profess, however honestly, at a given moment. What they say, they say not from any conviction, but out of a desire to say something, which is usually premature. And if you, being a fool, a fanatic, or a rogue, only go on hammering away at the 154 Flotsam and jetsam. same appeal, ana remain accessible, as likely as not they will come back to you and give you that you ask. ****** Reading an old black-letter chronicle, printed in 1580, I find that in 1523 a Parliament assembled at the " Blacke Friers" on the 15th of April, and that " after long debating the Com- mons granted two shillings of the pound of every man's goodes and lands that were worth twentie pound, or might dispend twentie pound by yeare, and so upward, and from forty shil- lings to twentie pound twelve pence of the pound, and under forty shillings of every head sixteene years and upward, four pence to be paid in two years." Now, as it appears from the same record that beef was then a halfpenny per pound and mutton three farthings, we may assume that money represented something like thirty times what it does now. The state of the matter, therefore, was this : that those who had an income of £600 or upward paid an income-tax of ten per cent, while they who had an income of £60 or upward paid but five per cent, and those who had less than this paid but ten shillings each, spread over two years. Yet if it were now proposed that the rich man should be taxed in double proportion to the moderately well-to-do and ten times as heavily as the poor, it would be said to be a thing unwarranted by any example in the world. Nevertheless all the subsidies that were of old granted to English monarchs were calculated in this same way, so as to levy a progressively higher percentage on the richer tax-pay- ers. And in those times, too, the poor had their own prop- erty in the shape of Church lands, one third of the revenue of which was theirs by law ; and also in the shape of six mill- ions of acres of common land. Anybody, therefore, may see how great a cause the poorer sort have to bless the Reforma- tion, which deprived them of the monasteries ; the first Revo- lution, which endowed them with equal taxation ; and the second Revolution, which provided them with a standing army and a national debt. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 155 CHAPTER XXXVI. ** By Jove, I am not covetous of gold, but if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive.'* So said Hotspur, and it is a saying that might send a thrill of enthu- siasm through the soul of a miser — if there be such a creature not in lunacy, which I doubt. It seems, indeed, so splendid, so godlike, to have none of the vulgar covetousness, but that other only which has always been held noble. Yet if they be looked at, there is little indeed to choose between them in their demerits. To covet honor is to covet not even the good opin- ion of men — which, God knows, is worth little enough — but only their good words, which do not always represent a good opinion, and are therefore worthless. It once meant to be quick in quarrel, to ride foremost in the fray, to protect ladies, and to be cited for these things between men for an ensample ; in these latter days it simply means to have your name often in the newspapers. This is not very hard to achieve for a man who will take the trouble ; moreover, when once the news- papers do begin there is no stopping them, and the name will go to the furthest ends of the globe six days a week regularly. But the facility with which this " honor" is gained, and the wideness of its reach, is more than equalled by its evanes- cence. There are those whose names filled columns of the journals ten years ago, and whom now nobody remembers or could remember. His is a very strong " honor" indeed that will live a generation. The names of the honorable men to be found, for instance, in the " Greville Memoirs" that are not absolutely new to this generation, may be counted on the fingers. Is it likely that their present successors will fare better ? Will anybody know fifty years hence who John Bright was, or Vernon Harcourt, or the fifteenth Earl of Derby ? Will anybody at that distance of time be ready to believe off-hand that Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. Ward Hunt, Lord Hartington, and the Earl of Ripon ever swayed their 156 i-LOTSAM AND JETSAM. country's destinies ? Judging from past experience, it seems higMy improbable. So that, in spite of all teaching, they may yet be found wise who contemn glory, and prize above it that inner consciousness of having done their whole duty, which, while it never yet brought present honor, always brings present satisfaction. ****** He who would really do a work in this world must find a man and a woman. And these must belong to him, as he belongs to himself, and be felt to be as trustworthy (at least) as himself through fair weather or foul. The woman is of first necessity in order to dispose and get rid of women. Then, being free to put himself into his work, he must find the man who is fit to be his ally. Being alone, he is a visionary or a lunatic, but having gained his one man he has gained in him the whole of mankind. For it is thenceforth but a repetition of the same process that is required, and against two men standing wholly together nothing can avail. I speak only of such a one as has found something to do and means to do it. He who merely means to pass the time need possess neither man nor woman — not even himself. ****** The misfortune of the truly great is that they are great ; that is to say, that they have no appeal from themselves, and must therefore rely upon themselves alone. Just as a colonial governor can never dine out in his colony, so they can never submit themselves to judgment. For who is to judge the wise man of his wisdom ? Not the fools ; for that were absurd. But between two wise men, who in their wisdom disagree, who is to judge ? Again, not the fools ; for that were still more absurd, since the point of disagreement is too knotty even for the wise to decide. Who then ? None but the wise them- selves. But this is despotism. It is. If you object to it, let us suppose that the fools shall judge. That is democracy. Then comes the question who are the wise ? To which you re- FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. Ibll ply that the fools are the best judges, at any rate of that. Whereupon I thank you and go my ways. ****** It is not that the woman you love is different from all other women, but that all other women are different from her. Pos- sibly they are better — that is nothing to the point, any more than it is that Velasquez could show you a better portrait than you will ever see in a mirror. For she shows you that you have already in your inner self as the portrait in which you de- light, and all that does not answer to it is to you as though it did not exist. It may all be admirable ; yet not only can you by no means grasp the admiration of it, but you can only feel a generous toleration for those who, being ignorant of what you know, put those admirable qualities above those others with which you alone are acquainted. For it is the distinctive mark and proof that you love this woman, when you are con- vinced beyond all possibility of demonstration that you know her as none else does. It is startling enough to remember that men can never appre- ciate anything in its own original self, that they will not even regard it until it has been translated to them, and that then all their admiration is reserved for the translation itself without its bringing them one whit nearer to an appreciation of the origi- nal. The thing, the man, the truth is nothing ; the comment and the commentator are everything. This beautiful world of ours would be unknown save for the poet ; the very human form would never have been regarded save for the artist ; the axiom does not exist till it is aflfirmed by the philosopher ; the notion is not with us till it is revealed by the prophet ; and once they have hardly done their copying work, we all fall to worshipping the copy and think no more of the original than we did before. Doubtless the poet, the artist, the philosopher, and the prophet are only recognized as such in so far as they appeal successfully to that sense of what they preach which has 158 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. hitherto lain dormant and dull within us. Doubtless we only- see the infinite beauty of that blade of grass when it is point- ed out, because we had previously the power of seeing it with- out its being pointed out had we set to work. But it is pre- cisely because he who shows it to us has done for us the work which we then know we ought to have done for ourselves, that we are grateful to him. So that it is not because the poet has brought us to see the poetry of the thing that we value him, but rather because he has rendered it unnecessary for us to seek its poetry in it, he having done this, as we think, for us, and done it sufficiently. Wherefore we look rather less to the thing than before, and are content with the poem which is, as we hold, its full translation. That is why we affect to love poe- try and yet despise the world ; why we rejoice in art and yet are shocked at the human form ; why we honor the prophet and blaspheme the idea ; why we crown the philosopher and deny the truth. Otherwise each of us must seek to be poet, artist, philosopher, and prophet to himself — which would in- volve using the talents tliat God has given us — which is not to be thought of. CHAPTER XXXVII. Railways and newspapers are to me the chief horrors of what is called (and God knows why) a " state of civilization.'' It is not so much the railway or the newspaper, but the abso- lute and unavoidable necessity of travelling by the one and of reading the other that is so terrible. It is not that they ill fulfil their purpose, but that they have eaten up and destroyed all other methods of fulfilling it, and that they are the only means now extant of movement and information. The hardship of it is that there is no choice — that you cannot travel except by rail, or learn anything of what is being done in the world ex- cept from newspapers. Posting, riding, and even walking are FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. 159 extinct, ejtcopt as feeders of the " lines ;" writing and conver- sation no longer have any existence, save as the preliminary stages of publication. And here comes the Nemesis, which is, that both railways and newspapers, having first destroyed all their rivals, have now at last destroyed the very objects of their own existence. They have made a complete end of travelling and of information, and have substituted for the former the transport of men as goods are transported, and for the latter rumor and the conflict of many lies. Sterne, when he made his sentimental journej'^ to Paris, travelled ; the time he spent on the voyage was delightfully employed and thor- oughly filled, and something was added by it to his life ; but a journey to Paris now merely represents so much time abso- lutely subtracted from life. We do it, indeed, in ten hours instead of five days, but that only means that we lose ten hours instead of gaining five days, which is a bad bargain. And so also with newspapers. There is more reading accessi- ble, but less real information. Those who know, know that there is rarely a line in any newspaper that can safely be read merely as it is printed, so that the constant reader only attains to great confusion, and not to greater knowledge. All which is ** progress." ****** When Bacon published his " Organon," a smart man said of it that ' ' it was a book which a fool could not and a wise man would not have written." There was, perhaps, more truth in the saying than would now be believed. I begin to think that Bacon is the real father of most of our troubles ; for indeed it was he who first invented and erected into a religion that " inductive" method of dealing with natural science which consists in fitting the theory to the facts* The result is that every theory appears to be and is accepted as being absolutely true, so long as all the known facts can be brought within it ; and that every man may have his own perfect theory according to his own knowledge or ignorance. Such a one has seen that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west ; for him, there- 160 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. fore, the theory is perfect that the sun moves roimd the earth. But such another one has learned another fact, and for him the theory is that the earth moves round the sun. Each will be and each, according to the Baconic method, is justified in being fully satisfied with this theory until he has acquired a new fact to disturb it, and to render a fresh one necessary. In truth, upon this plan no one could be certain that his theory is per- fect, or, in other words, that his belief is true, unless he is pre- viously certain that his knowledge is perfect ; but the essence of the system is that each is certain till the new fact proves him wrong. So that the result of this inductive method is to endow ignorance with the certainty that only rightfully belongs to knowledge. The elder Aristotelian method of fitting the facts to the theory had at least this advantage, that it enabled one to convict the theorist. A tailor who makes a coat to fit a man is a useful person, but a tailor who should make a coat that would fit all men would be a genius. * * ¥f * * * ' ' Wise men learn from reason, fools from experience, " is a saying which has often been repeated in various forms. But in reality there is nothing so difiicult as to learn from experi- ence — which is to say, to learn from the result of one series of event how to deal with another and a different series. For no two series, and, indeed, it may be said no two events, are ever wholly alike, so that no experience is every wholly applicable. And that being so, the original question still remains, how far it is applicable, which involves the reconsideration of the whole matter, which amounts to an exclusion of experience. If we only knew it, the simplest and shortest way through all the tangles of life were still to keep hold on the clue which has been given to us in such intelligence as we may possess. But that involves thought, and thought involves labor, being, indeed, the hardest kind of labor, which all of us seek most to avoid. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 161 CHAPTER XXXVIII. I HAVE a notion that wc most of us wear onr life the searay side without. Whether it be in order to convince other people, or in order to persuade ourselves into the one only truly delicious belief that we are martyrs, wc all seem to go about to say that we are worse off than we are. I declare I never yet met a man or woman who would admit that he or she was rich, happy, fortunate in love, lucky at play, or successful in the last new fashion. I have thirty thousand a year, but if you only knew the calls on me to keep up that estate ; I have youth, health, good looks, and no conscience, but Phillida flouts me, and the whole universe can't produce me a match for that bay ; the only woman I ever loved responds to my flame, but why on earth does she still go on flirting, God knows to what extent, with that or those others ? This out- side edge backward is good, but look at my broken nose earned in achieving it ; the bonnet is pretty, but when I was in Paris I saw others which were really sweet, only I couldn't afford them. " We are all miserable martyrs, let appearances say what they will ; we swear we are martyrs, and if you don't admire our courage in bearing up under it all, you have no heart." Nevertheless, perhaps some of us when we get alone, or lie concealed in that particular retreat of delectation which is known to us only, do sometimes think to ourselves, not how unhappy but how very happy we are. And then we go out into the world, and take up the old burden of woe — possibly for fear lest somebody should find out our treasure and come and steal it away ■* -^ * * * * Bacon once said that knowledge should neither be '' a couch whereon to recline a searching and restless spirit, nor a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect, nor a tower of state for a proud mind to raise 1G2 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. itself upon, nor a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention, nor a shop for profit or sale — but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate." Which is to say that the business of each man is to sow himself in order that the world at large may reap ; and this, indeed, is true. If one should seek either knowledge or any other thing for his own sole uses, his work were very slight, and soon done, for the capacity for enjoyment of each is limited ; but to fill the measure of the glory of the Creator, which means the full development of the potentialities of the creation and the relief of man's estate — which is the complete material happiness of mankind — this is a work which will last every man his life through. And if it be that it is worth while to go into that vineyard at all, the whole faculties and force, to the last ounce, of the laborer must be brought into and be continued in action to the end. The couch, the terrace, the tower, the fort, and the shop are not for him, but only an in- cessant painful toil of gathering stores with one hand and dis- tributing them with the other. He must look for no peace, no delectation, no rest even, but a continual round of work. And, as men are constituted, he is in the safest position who has the most and the sharpest goads to work. So that, if I were asked to provide a man with capital for his life, I should provide him with poverty, debt, unrequited love, doubts, and enemies. There are few who, when they are quit of these, do anything worth doing, unless it be something for themselves — which is not worth doing. ****** I never see the stars and the sky, which happens sometimes even in London, but I think lovingly of the night-watches on the Billy Baby, and wish I were at sea again. And the letters I get from Ned only increase my impatience at walking about these lanes of houses that hedge out God's world. I think, of all the letters with which a relentless Post-office deluges me, Ned's are the best. Here is one : " Sir, i now Write to inform you that the vessel and things FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 163 are all right and that i am quite well and shall be glad when i get to sea again the weather has Been very Bad here this last fortnight. Sir i shall be much obliged if you will please to send me soom Money we shall want several Jobs done before we Go to sea a new topmast and some of our cooking pans Want New Bottoms in them i have got the standing rigging down and Repaired and up again and set up, and there was a man washed out of a boat here last week and i keep the things all well aired and most of the Bed Close are a shore getting washed so i must conclude." This last phrase especially delights me, being always repeat- ed, so I must conclude, as though that were a consequence of the bed-clothes being ashore and the man being washed out of the boat. How it all makes one long to be alone again with the sea and the sky and the books. ****** I am getting very sick of the widow and the orphan. Those stage properties have, it seems to me, been vastly overdone in the desire to win reprobation for the conventional villain. Many preachers have taken up their cause against the villain, who is represented as enticing them into financial schemes and bringing them to ruin through the confidence they place in him. Now, I am ashamed to confess that I don't believe either widows or orphans to be anything like such fools, or so confiding as they look. My conviction is that when they take their " little all" (I use the sacred phrase) out of the dull Three per Cents, and put it into the Snowy Mountain Mines (Salted), which promise them thirty per cent, they are well aware that they are going in for a gamble, which involves a risk proportionate to the chance of gain. And it is nonsensi- cal to mark the misses and not the hits, to take no account of their winnings, and to represent them as victims whenever they lose. I have nothing, indeed , to say for the villain of the piece, and I am delighted when he is discovered and the most poetical justice is meted out to him. But what I claim is that the widow and the orphan, so far from being his victims, are 164 FLOTSAM a:n^d jetsam. his abettors, and, indeed, if the matter be thoroughly viewed, his accomplices. They, indeed, first invented hira, for it is their craving for high interest which first put it into his mind to offer them great risks. CHAPTER XXXIX. If there were wanting anything to convince an outside ob- server of the lunacy of Englishmen — which is, of course, to say of those who are commonly taken for their lungs and their im- pudence to represent Englishmen — it should be their methods of judging the policy of such foreign countries as have a policy. They know well that if they have to do with a tailor or a carpet manufacturer, with a workman or an artist, with a coal- owner or a parson, the only sure ground is that which is gained by a knowledge of his own self-interest (misunderstood), and they would and do laugh at the notion of religion, justice, sentiment, or chance being taken at all into account. Yet, when they come to consider the actions of Foreign States- men, they declare and seem to , believe that sentiment, pas- sion, and chance are the only, or at least the most, important influences at work. The marriage of a Prince and a Princess is sufficient to cancel all the policy that has been laboriously worked out for centuries. The proposal of a toast by a mon- arch is treated as though it were a pledge of peace to the monarch toasted ; even the dining of a company of shopmen volunteers is held to be a pregnant international event. Meantime the permanent officials carry on their traditions re- gardless of all ; certain sordid unavowed agents whose names are never printed, and who really do the work, continue to borrow their way to the desired end, and one day the world wakes to find that " family alliances," toasts, banquets, and the rest mean no more than treaties. Having learned this, the world continues to argue as though they did mean something. ****** FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. 165 What is the ideal man ? Nay, in what does the approach to the ideal man consist ? Are physical strength and beauty necessary ? Are the virtues necessary ? Is the development of faculties and of capabilities necessary ? And, if so, of what kind and in what degree are these to be ? Above all, of what kind ? For the notion of them differs in every clime, almost in every individual. The story of the painter, who ex- posed his ideal to the correction of the market-place, has been repeated over and over again any time since the world began, whenever any has dared the trial. Is there, then, no ideal man ? Yes, indeed, is there. It is enslirined in every man's breast, and is called God. Probably no man — unless, perhaps, it be Sir William Vernon Harcourt — really believes in his own superior clever- ness, but only in the inordinate folly of the rest of mankind. The best and wisest have confessed either directly or by im- plication the consciousness they have felt of being neither very wise nor very good ; but such men could but have seen that they were better and wiser than their fellows. Hence the dis- gust at the whole concern in which they have always ended. Perhaps it is still better to be a fool and not know it than to be a wiseacre and not be sure of it. H: •» * ^i: * He If it be the fact that some man has invented a means of toughening glass and porcelain so that they will not break, we are robbed of the greatest charm of the two most beautiful of all manufactured things. For the fragility of all that is beau- tiful is one of its chiefest delights. It addresses an irresisti- ble appeal to you to enjoy it keenly because it cannot be enjoyed for long. Who would care for a violet that could retain its freshness and sweetness for a year ? The bloom of the peach is delicious and grateful, because a touch destroys it. The charm of it is in this, that it is a fresh creation come to us out of the unseen, it is irresistible because you must take it quickly 166 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. or never. If unhappily we could put our peaches or violets by, and take them out again as fresh as ever, they would not be worth regarding — for the very sufficient reason that we could regard them whenever we pleased. CHAPTER XL. I KNOW a bootmaker who makes excellent boots ; his great ambition is to cease to make them, to keep a shop, and to su- perintend workmen : I know a barber who, as soon as he was discovered to shave and cut hair well, declined to do so any longer, and took to selling scents and hair-brushes : I know the ideal butler and the ideal maid ; they have left the service they so thoroughly performed, and have taken a public-house together, where they are now in course of ruining themselves for the sake of a brewer. Yet all these people believe that they have " got on in life" as soon as they succeed in aban- doning their proper business, and taking up one they don't understand. This notion is, indeed, so generally received that it is acted upon universally in these clever modern times of ours. We have elevated into a principle the practice of select- ing people for one kind of work by testing them in another. A man is a great orator, therefore he is held to be a great statesman ; he is a successful partisan, therefore an admirable minister ; an able writer, therefore a good editor ; a good algebraist, therefore a good civil servant ; a winning advocate, therefore a good judge ; an arithmetician, therefore a soldier ; a theorist, therefore a practitioner. This might be well if the capacity for the work we want were not so often not merely not indicated, but actually excluded by the capacity for the work by which we judge. I have seen men compete at a greasy pole for the leg of mutton on its top, but I never heard the winner declared to be the best butcher. But then, it is true, this was a matter of no importance. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 167 Somebody has said, " There are more women in the world than one." Not so. There is either one woman only, or there are none. In the same way somebody has said there are more worlds than one. That may be, but if Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus are really inhabited, it is by people of entirely different construction from ourselves. We can't inhabit them, that is certain, wherefore for us there is only this one world possible — only this or none at present, whatever there may be in the future when our resolved atoms may be brought together in different form. So with that woman,, For as soon as you admitted her existence you thereby excluded all others, and saw them only *' as trees walking." You can breathe her atmosphere, live with her seasons, grow in her storm and sunshine, and feed upon her fruits. To do as much with another you must be a different creature. You know no more how or why it is than how or why you came upon this planet ; all you know is that she and it are all alone for you, and that for you no others are possible — for the present. ****** I hate people who are open to conviction, no less than I de- test those who never sulk : the former only prove that they do not reason, the latter that they do not feel. Yet one hears people constantly claim to their credit that when offended they are " very angry for a short time, and then it is all over ;" as though it were a merit either to take offence where there is none, or to dismiss it shortly where there is. When one's fel- low is just there is nothing to forget or to remember, for so much is his duty ; but when he either goes beyond it and is generous, or falls below it and is unjust, neither the one nor the other can be, or should be, forgotten, nor can either fail of its effect upon those who appreciate what tlfey mean ; for they throw the whole relations out of gear, and introduce into them a new element which must affect them to the end. It is the blessing and the curse of life that good actions and bad do not die, but bear their fruit to all time. You cut my father's 168 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. throat, or you rob me of a shilling, and I am not to forget it : on the contrary, I am to hang and imprison you, without anger. But you kill my trust in you — or, in other words, you kill yourself in me — and you rob me of my one cherished dream worth more than many shillings ; and then I am to cry out on you with big words, and there an end. ****** If you are perfect I will trust you ; but as I know you are not perfect I can only trust you if you will lie to me. I have not confidence in you, but I am willing to affect a confidence, if you will ease my vanity by pretending thoroughly to deserve it. But beware, above all, that, you do not let me even sus- pect the truth. If once you admit to me that you have vio- lated my confidence, or that you have been so much as sorely tempted to violate it, if you are not ready to assure me that you would go to the stake rather than do that, then farewell to all confidence. What ? You say that the very fact that you allow yourself not to be perfect, the very fact that you, unsolic- ited and unforced, admit that you are not armed at all points, should be to me the greater, as it is the only proof of your sincerity and a guarantee that, so far as you can, you will re- deem your trust. What ? You say that your confession of fault is a proof of repentance and an earnest of amendment. Why, you are talking old Christianity. / talk modern logic. I tell you that your sincerity is nothing to me, that what I want is to be able to regard you, and to say that you look as if you were sincere. Be sure, then, that you lie to me. Be sure you whiten the outside of the sepulchre — then will I swear to all the world and myself that there are no dead men's bones inside. ****** Certainly the most tiresome of all inflictions is to hear one of the modern lights hold forth against what they are pleased to call '* conventionalities." If you would believe them there is to be no law, and no rule of outward conduct, the expres- sion of that law ; but each creature is to exercise, perfect, and FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 169 carry into practice his own rule for every occasion that may arise, quite as it may suit that creature. There are to be no general principles, no general rules, but only a general inven- tion of special rules. All which may be very well for the clever people who feel that they are not to be abashed by any combination. But then what are we fools to do ? We can't argue everything down from Genesis to the Day of Judgment in the twinkling of an eye, and to us it is of great comfort and of great assistance to be able to appeal to certain rules as determined by the wisdom of our ancestors to be applicable to certain cases. I have been taught that I am not to eat peas with a knife, and that I am not to lie. It may be that a de- bate and a division in Parliament, which is the final test of all things, might prove that I am to eat this particular pea with that particular knife, or that I am to tell that especial lie. But meantime I have got to act, and how am I to do it unless I act under the rule that I know ? Whenever I come across one who refuses the rule I look upon him wuth suspicion, for I know that one to be either a rebel or a genius. ****** My love and I quarrelled. She was wrong, and I forgave her and loved her the more for it. My love and I quarrelled again. She was right, and I forswore her and loved her no longer. But we quarrelled yet again. Both of us were wrong, and I forgave her again and loved her better than ever. CHAPTER XLT. The truth. Yes, but which truth ? Yours or mine ? The truth in both of us is what we can manufacture out of our moral and intellectual machine when it works smoothly ; but each machine must be used as it is — that is to say, as it has come to be with the mendings and patchings of a lifetime. There arc 170 FLOTSAM AKD JETSAM. parts of them that will work in like manner and produce like results ; but that is only because we have agreed beforehand upon all the pipes and cog-wheels. We both say that two and two make four, or fourteen as the case may be, but only by virtue of having agreed first upon the original notions, and then upon their subsequent treatment. But now take somewhat out of chaos — take the entirely new notion — and without agreement run it through any two machines, and you shall find it come out of each one monstrously unlike, both to its original self and to the product of the other. No man does good work when his success is assured. It is when he is struggling with the world, when all men revile him and persecute him, when he is still utterly rejected, that he is strongest. Nay, it is then, too, that he is most confident, for his confidence then only springs from the faith that is in him, and is not made up of any external contributions. He goes to war then of his own cost, and then only is he sure to fight well. If he achieves success, the only way by which he can escape from its fatal influence is to work for generations beyond the present, and so retain the doubt whether it is achieved. * * * * * * The denouement of a play, so far from relieving me, only diverts me. It always amounts in effect to a renunciation of the play itself. Through four acts and the better part of a fifth you show by examples, extreme but still possible, that men and women are foolish, passionate, unreasoning beings — a fact which, indeed, commends itself to all who knew them, and upon which the whole interest of your play hangs. And then at the end you suddenly turn round and recant this as a heresy and a lie ; for you seek to show by your denoue7nent that they have been reasonable all through, or at least have been working unreasonably to a reasonable end. So that you have been laughing at us through those four acts and a fraction, and you do want us to believe that we shall gather grapes of thorns and FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 171 figs of thistles. In reply to which we may fairly laugh at you for your folly, and despise you for your dishonesty. Poetic justice, indeed ! Yes, in a poetic world, but not in this ; yes, in the course of generations (for are not the sins of the fathers visited on the children ?), but not now. There are many good plays, but in order to make them true or valuable as represen- tations of this tangled ridiculous knot of life, which is never cut by any denouement y they all want to lose their last act. One of the phrases which most amuses me is that of the ** power of the press." As though the mere fact of putting nonsense into print gave it any more power with reasonable people than it had before, or as though it were necessary to put it into print in order to get it into the heads of unreasonable people. The only power the press has is that of making silly persons believe that it has power, until they discover the con- trary. This is, indeed, an operation which will take some of them a day or two, and during that day or two the press has their alliance — for what it is worth. But if, indeed, the press were honest — yes, if indeed. Two things does this strange world respect — ignorance and weakness. They are called, indeed, by the names of purity and innocence ; but in reality they are not these, neither are they like them. Indeed, the former exclude the latter. Purity implies the knowledge and rejection of impurity ; inno- cence the possession and the forbearance of nocent power. But clothed in these names it is the easier for me to put a premium on the qualities which I really desire to find in those who come into my life. The man or woman who is neither ignorant nor weak may comprehend me, and my littleness — may perhaps conquer me and my pretensions. Thus shall I be reduced to nothing. Then let me find in them nothing but ignorance and weakness : and let me praise them for purity and innocence. 172 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. For this too, while it confirms them in their subjection, will add also to my renown with others. ****** Against stupidity the gods fight in vain. Yet, perhaps, if they were not gods but men, they might not vainly struggle even against this. For if at the moment it is hard to with- stand the irritation which it is the privilege of stupidity to raise, by a single word opening a window into its own depths, yet when one comes to think of it there is something in it that appeals very powerfully to human nature. The wisest and ablest of men must, I should suppose, have a secret suspicion that they, too, are stupid in some matters ; and this, when they remember it, must make them look charitably on those who are stupid in others. Otherwise they would never have the patience to sit down and unravel so patiently the tangled skein of unreason, merely in order to demonstrate to others the conclusions which they have reached alone, and which others might therefore equally reach alone. It would be much shorter and more gratifying simply to break the heads of all the stupid people by a summary process. But then we should be badly off for what is called common sense, which is nothing else than stupidity highly developed. * * * * c iind f-.olic^h. 7:^ ; two blind, 81 ; extinction of tne race of real, lvi8 ; all born to special uses or misuses, Vii ; self-made, 219. Mii.L. John ytuart, quoted, 6. Mind, t^trangel coni^tituted, 9,19. Misery, tiic cause of personal, 232. Money, <:aiiiiii;^', 145 ; chantiers, 179. Moon, intliieiice on the weather, ()9. MoouiaH cafes, 254 ; women dancing, ;<;55. Morning, a lively punrise this, 8. Mouocco, judicial sy.-iem of, 253. Mysulp, an account of, 7. N. Name, inheriting a great. 142. Newspapeks the root of all, 38. Novelty, the corse of, 175. Observation, the taking an, 68, 198 instruction in takinec an, 93. Ocean, billows on Atlantic, 243. Opinions, the curse of tlie world, 111. Paisley shawls, 151. Palmerston, Lord, overrated, 24. Parliament, British, how engaged, 38, Parson, a country, 25. People, barbarous and cultured, 20 ; in consistency of, 174. Personality always changing, 221. PiEUVRE, a curious lish, 78. Pilot, St. Peter's, Guernsey, 73. Pistols, objections to carrying, 105. Place, winning a first, 144. Plagiarist, an honest. 140. Platitude, an old lying. 131. Play, the, denouement of, 170. Plimsoll and Greenwich hospital, 44. Poetry and poets, 112. Points, remembrance of people by their worst, 61. Politics, the perpetual comedy of, 135. Pook, the claims of the, 18. Port, how to get in, 229 ; conditions of getting out of, 240. Portrait, when to get, of one's self, 236. Pkay, who can, 226. Preference, reason for, 75. Press, the power of, 171 Priest and the beggar, 190. Prince of naval battles, 28. Principle, salable, 217. Progress, what is, 149. Pkopertt, absolute in sea and laud, 86. Prophecy, the gift of, not enviable. 62. Providence, laws of, 45 : e\ idenee of, G8 ; '^iii«ct of, ii^ making a dangerous coast, Q. Queen of Sheba and mutton chops, Reason as a guiding principle, 197 ; the province of, 227. Remkmbranck of a boyish love, 5C. J^E-miniscknces, painful, 60. ItEPL'TATioN, the insecurity of an un- challenged, 110; desire lo have a bel- ter, liu. Romancers eflective teachers, 54. Rulers, inconsistencies of, 24. S. Sabbath-keeper, 71, Sailing, power, diminution of, 61 ; di- rections for, 188. Sailors, their outfit at Falmouth, 87. Sam, the sailor, 113. :sea, one lesson of, 24 ; how to land on the beach in a broken, 24 ; worth of l]vin» at, 25 ; occupation at, 46 ; mak- ing the best of it at. 48 : the open, 85 ; the weather, its uncertainties at, 92, 224 : God as seen in the, 201 ; squalls at, 257, 258 ; Mediterranean, a swindle, 259. Seafaring, the charm of, 70. Seamanship, examination in, 41. Science, progress of, 64 ; the only one, 141. Secrets, their importance, 74. Self INTEREST, 8, 223. Self-knowledge, 176. Sentiments, false, 168, Sex, restraining the female, 120. Ship, the best place to live in, 237 ; noth- ing like a man's own, 74, Solitude, 223. Sports, legislation for athletic, 44. Standard, an immutable, invariable, 21. Star, steering a course by a, 35. Steam, and seamanship, 2.30. Steamer, and the guard-ship- in collis- ion, 42. St. Malo, the character of. 77 ; a breeze at, 80 ; municipal authorities of, 83 ; leaving, 84. Stupldity. 172. Suicide, reflections on, 103. Sunday a misrepresented day, 71. Sydnbv, Algernon, 176-180. Tangier, description of, 251, 256. Temptation, entertaining a, 43 ; ex- posure to, 150. Thames, regulations for traflic on the, 34. Theories, vain, 186. Thoughts, the, impertinence of uttering one's own, 192 ; the satisfaction of utterin? one's. ]V»3, 266 IN^DEX. Tide, counting with the, 43 ; allowing for a spring, 54 ; out at St. Peter's, Guernsey, 74. Titles, their meaning, 100. Tongues, confusion or, 174. Topsail, lacing the, 74. ToRRioiAKf, death of, 203. Trade, nobody will learn a, 46. Trifling, microscopic, 130. Troubles, comparative insignificance of, 42. Trouville, an inscription at, 99. Truth, which ? 109. Virtue, its proper place, 200. Voice, importance of a good, 195. Voltaire's hatred for priests, 25. William the Conqueror, one of the mansions of, 98. Winter, laid up for, 129; mornings in, 143. Wisdom, what is it ? 148 ; a bad pre- cept of woiiflly, 179. Woman, 167 ; ugly and beautiful, single- minded, fickleness of, 14, 19, 20, 21 ; what a man loves in, 137 ; the demon- stration that youJlove a, 157 ; the loving of an ugly, 187 ; how to know her, 195. Women, English and French contrasted, 99 ; craving attention, 104. Words, idle, 55. Work, how really to do a, 156 ; when good is assured, 170. World, living at the end of the, 144 ; what it respects, 171 ; the, organized for a difi"erent set of creatures, 11. W. War, going to, 11, 225. Washerwoman, daughter of a, 211. Waterford, reflections at, 89 ; the car- driver at, 90. Y. Yacht, again on the, 184 , oflicers of, 45 ; troubles on board the, 185. Yachting off Ostend, 213. 207 THE STANDARD LIBRARY. WHAT REPRESENTATIVE CLERGY3IEN SAY OF IT. Chas. K. 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Wash- ington Moon, F.R.S.L. 12mo.. 20 72. ThoConversion of Children. Rev. Ed war,i Payson Hammond. 12mo ;i() 73. New Testament Helps. Rev. W. F. Crafts. 8vo 2t) W. Opium— England's Coercive Poli- cy. Rev. Jho. Ligcins. 8vo 10 75. Blood of Jesus. Rev. Wm. A. Reid. With Introduction by E. P.Hammond. 12nho 10 76. Lesson in the Closet for 1883. Charles F. Deems. D D. i2mo. . 90 77-78. Heroes and Holidavs. Rev. W.F. Crafts. 12mo. 2'ptB.. both 30 79. Reminiscences of Rev. Lvman Beecher, D.D. 8\ o ." 10 FUNK 4 WAGNALLS, 10 and 12 Dey St„ NEW YORK. PERNI CIOUS B OOKS. The following are forcible arguments in favor of our cheap STAND- ARD BOOKS — nearly every newspaper chronicles similar ones : A boy in Ohio went into the yard and blew out his brains with a shotgun after the manner described ''in a sensational novel he had been reading." A half-dozen boys in New York formed themselves into a gang of *' Road Agents," fully armed with pistols and revolvers, but were luckily arrested before they had opportunity to rob and murder on the model of the " Road Agents" on the Western frontier, so graphically pictured in the popular " blood and thunder" fiction of the day. Another boy shot his stepmother. He said: "I don't see anything wrong in that kind of thing. It's dead sure to make me the hero of a novel, with my picture in it." We might multiply these incidents ad infinitum. Read what Anthony Comstock has printed about the evil wrought by bad books. Tens of thousands of boys and girls are growing into a worthless man- hood and womanhood, the victims of misdirected reading. Books fit for the young to read must be made as cheap and of as easy access as are worthless books. MEYER'S COMMENTARY ON ACTS. A Critical and Exegetical Hand-book to the Acts of the Apostles. By H. A. W. Meter. With Preface, Index and Supplementary Notes to the American Edition, by Rev. Wm. Ormiston, D.D., LL.D., New York. Large octavo, 544 pages. Cloth, $2.50. Meyer's Commentary on the New Testament is a monumental work of critical and exegetical learning. Dr. T. W. Chambers, New York, says : "Meyer justly has been called the prince of exegetes, being at once acute and learned.'' Dr. Thomas Armitagk, New York, says : " It is of immense value in its line." Db. Jksse B. Thomas, Brooklyn, N. Y., says : "Am glad that Meyer's Acts has received additional value from annotations from a hand as wise and skilful as that of Dr. Ormiston." Dr. Joseph T. Duryea, Boston, says : " Meyer is always helpful in matters of Lexicography, Philology, and Syntax." Dr. Charles Robinson, New York, says : " It is among the very best, and most needed for our use on this side of the water." Dr. Arthur Brooks, New York, says : "I have found Meyer's Commentary on the Acts so useful for its large learning, wise judgment, and conciseness of statement, that I am very glad that it is republished in the form in which it can have a general circulation. ^^^ S^^'w^M^ ;-*#iW»iSi^ W^^'^'^^^^' itejjBjjxwy vv^w ^vgWWW^QgVV^^^^'^i^V^vy.: ib^^ysdaw^^y^^^y^^ vW'VV V^^yy^^^^y S'i.jv'vvg.^i^S^V ^wy, Wfewyy^i vyww ,^, 'WWW-,w;. W^VW"ww^^, ^m^r%.,. ^fV**^ ^Uk.M.^J;^m J^^a^^y&v mmC^' ^« W'W\4 i^VVwii •^«J^ mm .;VY^y^W^V,, •W^^^^Uv 5^iS.;,!!¥V- ^^^ » 'gV«5WV yiOMV,^ h ^ » w ^J^^^^^^ J^Cvi V ^ » w VV^\J\ ^Vw\.- I jU . ■ ^ vW ^^v. vw HWi^ d^^^^v;o^ ^W^, ^«^ ^:^^^^^^ '^^\j/^^^ fe^«yt«M^^ i^'^mx ■^N^'Vwvwv^ /f^^WW^VV jO^VV^US^^i^Vy^^^^^ , .^yyi>m;^^^^Vi^'^>^^^>^^'^"^«v' LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 154 805