is almost bound to become a lesser man than his father,
be removed from the enlarging influence of the sea, and have it given
him as the height of ambition to grow up a dram-drinking or
psalm-smiting, Sunday-top-hatted tradesmen. Then I desire savagely to
have the power of a God, not that I might direct his life--he can sail
his own boat better than I,--but that I might keep the ring clear for
him to fight in, and prevent foul play. What indeed would I not do to
remove some of the guilt of us educated men and women who force our
ideas on people without asking whether they need them, without caring
how maimed, stultified and potent for evil the ideas become in process
of transmission, without seeing that for the age-old wisdom of those
whom we call the uneducated we are substituting a jerry-built
knowledge--got from books--which we only half believe in ourselves? New
lamps for old! The pity of it! The farce!

But when I watch Jimmy fishing, I grow confident that the sea has its
grip on him; that it will drag him to itself as it dragged his father
from the grocery store; that whatever happens, it will always be part
of his life to keep trivialities, meannesses and education from quite
closing in around him.

17

[Sidenote: "_THE FISHER FATHER AND CHILD_"]

_The Fisher Father and Child_

As I pulled the boat across a loppy sea--
The bumping and splashing boat,
With the sail flapping round my head,
And the pile of mackerel amidships ever growing larger and lovelier
in the light--
And the sun rose behind the cliffs to eastward, and the sky became
lemon-yellow
(A graciously coloured veil twixt the earth and all mystery beyond),
And the wavelets sparkled and darted like ten thousand fishes at play
in the ambient dawn,--
It seemed that the sky and the sea and the earth gathered themselves
together,
And became one vast kind eye, looking into the stern of the boat,
At the father and boy.

Navy-blue guernsey, and trousers stained by the sea, scarce hiding
the ribbed muscles;
Tan-red face, the fresh blood showing through;
Blue eyes, all of a flash with fishing and the joy of hauling 'em in;
now on the luff of the sail (out of habit, there being hardly a
sail-full of air), now to wind'ard, and again smiling on the
child;
Big pendulous russet hands, white in the palms from salt water, and