ny of us
even dream, is the comparison that life is a great sea and we who
journey through, as ships, that at distant intervals dot the surface.

A ship at sea, as life to many, appears a lonely and desolate thing. How
much room there is for ships, more ships, bigger ships, for great
convoys of ships, yet ships as a rule travel alone and not in convoys.

What of the ships?

Just now, there is passing a corporation-owned oil tanker, greasy and
uninteresting. Yesterday we passed several scheduled freighters,
carrying fixed cargoes to fixed ports; the day before a passenger
liner, sailing by the clock, in Naples or New York on Friday, pouring
out its never-ending tide of those going and returning.

But let us not waste time or thought on commercial or mercenary craft.
Here is not interest or adventure or much real return on the investment,
unless your aim in life is to die merely a sea captain or a ship owner.
Let us cruise where the currents are strong, where the rocks are
dangerous: in the frozen North or in sight of coral island or low beach
and palm trees, where there is an uncertainty of return in gold, but a
wealth of interest and adventure and experience.

The coral islands and the palm groves in this great sea are not in the
South Pacific; nor the ice floes north or south of a certain degree; nor
the swift currents and dangerous rocks near some inhospitable shore, but
at home; and the ships that pass are our companions.

And the ships of interest are the barks that sail as fancy whispers in
the chart room or the tramp trader, at Sidney today, tomorrow at Malta,
or the derelict. And who would not rather hear and know the story of
such a vessel and voyage than smell the oil of the tanker or hear from
daybreak to midnight the victrola, the piano and the chit-chat of the
passenger liner.

And, strange to tell, most of us when on a most wonderful cruise with
everything within reach, though out of sight, because we jab our eyes
sightless wiping the tears away, bewail our luck, saying:

"See I a dog? There's ne'er a stone to throw!
Or stone? Tere's ne'er a dog to hit I trow!
Or if at once both stone and dog I view,
It is the King's dog! Damn! What can I do?"

Home again! John finds the boy two inches taller and Mary as fair to
look upon as when first he married her. The house is just the same,
except Mary has taken down the framed needle-work done by his mother
which hung over the living-room do