After the failure of the numerous conferences which have been held between Charles Stuart and the Commissioners of Parliament, and after a trial in Westminster Hall the incidents of which it would be painful to recall, the Court appointed for the purpose has reached a conclusion with which we think the mass of Englishmen will, however reluctantly, agree. The courtesy and good feeling upon which we pride ourselves in our political life seem to have been strangely forgotten during the controversies of the last few months. It would be invidious to name particular instances, and we readily admit that the circumstances were abnormal. Feeling ran high, and with Englishmen at least, who are accustomed to call a spade a spade, strong words will follow upon strong emotions; but we can hope that the final decision of theCourt will have put behind us for ever one of the most critical periods of discussion, with all its deplorable excesses and wild and whirling words, which we can remember in modern times.
Upon the principle of the conclusion to which the Court has come there is a virtual unanimity. Men as different as Colonel Harrison on the one hand and Mr. Justice Bradshaw on the other, Mr. Cromwell—whom surely all agree in regarding as a representative Englishman—and that very different character, Mr. Ireton, whom we do not always agree with, but who certainly stands for a great section of opinion, are at one upon a policy which has received no serious criticism, and recommends itself even to such various social types as the blunt soldier, Colonel Pride, and the refined aristocrat, Lord Grey of Groby.
But though a matter of such supreme importance to the mass of the people, a measure which it is acknowledged will bring joy to the joyless, light to those who sit in darkness, and a new hope in their old age to fifteen millionsof British working men and women, may be unanimously agreed to in principle, it is unfortunately possible to defeat even so beneficent a measure by tactics of delay and by a prolonged criticism upon detail. The Government have therefore, in our opinion, acted wisely in determining to proceed with due expedition to the execution of Charles Stuart, and we do not anticipate any such resistance, even partial and sporadic, as certain rash freelances of politics have prophesied. There was indeed some time ago some doubt as to the success of a policy to which the Government was pledged, and in spite of the strong and disciplined majority which they commanded in the House, in spite of the fact that the House was actually unanimous upon the general lines of that policy, many people up and down the country, who did not fully comprehend it, had been led to act rashly and even riotously against its proposals. All that we may fairly say is now over, and we trust that the Government will have the firmness to go forward with a piece of work in which it nowundoubtedly has the support of every class of society.
We should be the last to deny the importance of meeting any serious objection in detail that still remains. Thus the inhabitants of Charing Cross have a legitimate grievance when they say that the scene of the execution will be hidden from them by the brick building which stands at the northern end of Whitehall, but they must remember that all practical measures involve compromise and that if their point of view alone had been considered and the scaffold were to be erected upon the north of that annex, the crowd for which the Home Secretary has made such wise provision by the erection of strong temporary barriers in the Court of the Palace would have no chance of attending at the ceremony.
We confess that the more serious point seems to us to arise on the Bishop of London's suggestion that only the clergy of the Established Church should be present upon the platform, and we very much fear that this pretension—inour view a very narrow and contemptible one—will receive the support of that large number of our fellow citizens which is still attached to the Episcopal forms of Christianity. But we take leave to remind them, and the Bishop of London himself, that the present moment, when the Free Churches have so fully vindicated their rights to public recognition, is hardly one in which it is decent to press these old-fashioned claims of privilege.
There is a third matter which we cannot conclude without mentioning: we refer to the attitude of Charles Stuart himself. While the matter was stillsub judicewe purposely refrained from making any comment, as is the laudable custom, we are glad to say, in the country. But now the sentence has been pronounced we think it our duty to protest against the attitude of Charles Stuart during the last scene of this momentous political controversy. He is too much of an English gentleman and statesman to exaggerate the significance of our criticism, or to fail to understand the spirit inwhich it is offered, for that is entirely friendly, but he must surely recognise by this time, that such petty ebullitions of temper as he exhibited in refusing to plead and in wearing his hat in the presence of men of such eminence as Mr. Justice Bradshaw were unworthy of him and of the great cause which he represents. He would have done well to take a lesson from the humble tipstaff of the Court, who, though not required to do so by the Judges, instantly removed his cap when they appeared and only put it on again when he was conducting the prisoner back after the rising of Court.
Finally, we hope that all those who have been permitted by the Home Secretary to be present at Whitehall upon next Tuesday will remember our national reputation for sobriety and judgment in great affairs of the State, and will be guilty of nothing that might make it necessary for the Government to use severe measures utterly repugnant to the spirit of English liberty.
Mr. Herod, whose death has just been announced by a telegram from Lyons, was one of the most striking and forceful personalities of our time.
By birth he was a Syrian Jew, suffering from the prejudice attaching to such an origin, and apparently with little prospect of achieving the great place which he did achieve in the eager life of our generation.
But his indomitable energy and his vast comprehension of men permitted him before the close of his long and useful life to impress himself upon his contemporaries as very few even of the greatest have done.
Our late beloved sovereign, Tiberius, perhaps the keenest judge of men in the whole Empire, is said to have remarked one evening in the smoking-room to his guests, when Herod hadbut recently left the apartment: "Gentlemen, that man is the corner-stone of my Eastern policy," and the tone in which His Majesty expressed this opinion was, we may be sure, that not only of considered judgment, but of equally considered reverence and praise.
It is a striking testimony to Mr. Herod's character that while he was still quite unknown (save, of course, as the heir of his father) he mastered the Greek and Latin tongues, and we find in his diary the shrewd remark that as the first was necessary to culture, so was the second to statesmanship.
It would have been impossible to choose a more difficult moment than that in which the then unknown Oriental lad was entrusted by the Imperial Government with the task which he has so triumphantly accomplished. The Levant, as our readers know, presents problems of peculiar difficulty, and though we can hardly doubt that the free and democratic genius of our country would at last have solved them, we owe it to the memory of this remarkable personality thatthe solution of them should have been so triumphantly successful.
We will not here recapitulate the obscure and often petty intrigues which have combined to give the politics of Judæa and its neighbourhood a character of anarchy. It is enough to point out that when Mr. Herod was first entrusted with his mission the gravest doubts were entertained as to whether the cause of order could prevail. The finances of the province were in chaos, and that detestable masquerade of enthusiasm to which the Levantines are so deplorably addicted, especially on their "religious" side, had baffled every attempt to re-establish order.
Mr. Herod's father (to whom it will be remembered the Empire had entrusted the beginnings of this difficult business), though undoubtedly a great man, had incurred the hatred of all the worst and too powerful forces of disorder in the district. His stern sense of justice and his unflinching resolution in one of the last affairs of his life, when he had promulgated hisepoch-making edict to regulate the infantile death-rate—a scientific measure grossly misunderstood and unfortunately resented by the populace—had left a peculiarly difficult inheritance to the son. The women of the lower classes (as is nearly always the case in these social reforms) proved the chief obstacle, and legends of the most fantastic character were—and still are—current in the slums of Tiberias with regard to Mr. Herod Senior. When, some years later, he was struggling with a painful disease which it needed all his magnificent strength of character to master, no sympathy was shown him by the provincials of the Tetrarchy, and, to their shame be it said, the professional and landed classes treasonably lent the weight of their influence to the disloyal side.
It was therefore under difficulties of no common order that Mr. A. Herod, the son, took over the administration of that far border province which, we fear, will cause more trouble before its unruly inhabitants are absorbed inthe mass of our beneficent and tolerant imperial system.
As though his public functions were not burden enough for such young shoulders to bear, the statesman's private life was assailed in the meanest and most despicable fashion. His marriage with Mrs. Herodias Philip—to whose lifelong devotion and support Mr. Herod bore such beautiful witness in his dedication ofStray Leaves from Galilee—was dragged into the glare of publicity by the less reputable demagogues of the region, causing infinite pain and doing irreparable injury to a most united and sensitive family circle. The hand of the law fell heavily upon more than one of the slanderers, but the evil was done, and Mr. Herod's authority, in the remote country districts, especially, was grievously affected for some years.
Through all these manifold obstacles Mr. Herod found or drove a way, and finally achieved the position we all look back to with such gratitude and pride in the really dangerouscrisis which will be fresh in our readers' memory. It required no ordinary skill to pilot the policy of the Empire through those stormy three days in Jerusalem, but Mr. Herod was equal to the task, and emerged from it permanently established in the respect and affection of the Roman people. It is a sufficient testimony to his tact and firmness on this occasion that he earned in that moment of danger the lasting friendship and regard of Sir Pontius Pilate, whose firmness of vision and judgment of men were inferior only to that of his lamented sovereign.
Unlike most non-Italians and natives generally, Mr. Herod was an excellent judge of horseflesh, and his stables upon Mount Carmel often carried to victory the colours—rose tendre—of "Sir Caius Gracchus," thenom-de-guerreby which the statesman preferred to be known on the Turf.
Mr. Herod's æsthetic side was more highly developed than is commonly discovered in level-headed men of action. He personally supervised the architectural work in the rebuildingof Tiberias, and, of the lighter arts, was a judge of dramatic or "expressional" dancing.
During the earlier years of this eventful career Mr. Herod's life was greatly cheered and brightened by the companionship of his stepdaughter, Miss Salome Philip (now Lady Caiaphas), whose brilliantsalonso long adorned the Quirinal, and who—we are exceedingly glad to hear—has been entrusted with that labour of love, the editing of her stepfather's life, letters, and verses; for Mr. Herod was no mean poet, and we may look forward with pleasurable expectation to his hitherto unpublished elegiacs on the beautiful scenery of his native land.
By the provisions of Mr. Herod's will he is to be cremated, and the ceremony will take place on a pyre of cedar-wood in the Place Bellecour at Lyons.
A weekly feature of theCarthaginian Messenger, quoted from its issue of March 15, 220B. C.
A weekly feature of theCarthaginian Messenger, quoted from its issue of March 15, 220B. C.
It is quite a pleasure to be in dear old Rome again after a week spent upon an important mission which your readers are already acquainted with, in the Tuscan country. All that drive through Etruria was very delightful and the investigation will undoubtedly prove of the greatest use. But what a difference it is to be back in the sparkle and gaiety of the Via Sacra. Every day one feels more and more howrealthe entente is. Probably no nations have become faster friends than those who have learnt to respect each other in war, and though the Romans were compelled to accept our terms, and to undertake the difficult administration of Sicily with money furnished by the Carthaginian Government, all that wasmore than twenty years ago and the memory of it does not rankle now. Indeed, I think I may say that the Roman character is a peculiarly generous one in this regard. They know what a good fight is, and they enjoy it—none better—but when it is over no one is readier to shake hands and to make friends again than a Roman. I was talking it over with dear little Lucia Balba the other day and I thought she put it very prettily. She said:
Est autem amicitia nihil aliud, nisi omnium divinarum huminarumque rerum cockalorumque Romanorum et jejorum concinnatio!
Est autem amicitia nihil aliud, nisi omnium divinarum huminarumque rerum cockalorumque Romanorum et jejorum concinnatio!
Was it not charming?
Of course there is a little jealousy—no more than a pout!—about Hasdrubal's magnificent work in Spain, but every one recognises what a great man he is, and it was only yesterday that M. Catulus (the son of our fine old enemy Lutatius) said to me with a sigh: "The reason we Romans cannot do that kind of thing is because we cannot stick together. We are for ever fighting among ourselves. Just look at ourhistory!" On the other hand, I can't think that our mixture of democracy and common sense would suit the Latin temperament, with itsverveandnescio quid, which make it at the same time so incalculable and so fascinating. Every nation must have its own advantages and drawbacks. We are a little too stolid, perhaps, and a little too businesslike, but our stolidity and our businesslike capacity have founded Colonies over the whole world and established a magnificent Empire. The Romans are a little too fond of "glory" and give way to sudden emotion in a fashion which seems to us perilously like weakness, but no one can deny that they have established a wonderfully methodical and orderly system of roads all over Italy, and that their capital is still the intellectual centre of the world.
Talking of that I ought to pay a tribute to the Roman home and to Roman thrift. We hear too much in our country of the Roman amphitheatre and all the rest of it. What many Carthaginians do not yet know is that thestay-at-home sober Roman is the backbone of the whole place. He hates war as heartily as we do, and though his forms of justice are very different from ours he is a sincere lover of right-dealing according to his lights. It is due to such men that Rome is, after ourselves, the chief financial power in the world.
But you will ask me for more interesting news than this sermon. Well! Well! I have plenty to give you. The Debates in the Senate are as brilliant and, I am afraid, as theatrical as usual. Certainly the Romans beat us at oratory. To hear Flaccus deliver a really great speech about the introduction of Greek manners is a thing one can never forget! Of course, it will seem to you in Carthage very unpractical and very "Roman," and it is true that that kind of thing doesn't make a nation great in the way we have become great, but it is wonderful stuff to hear all the same—and such a young man too! The Senate has, however, none of our ideas of order, and the marvel is how they get through their work at all.There are no Suffetes, and sometimes you will hear five or six men all talking at once and gesticulating in that laughable Italian fashion which our caricaturists find so valuable!
Those of my readers who run over to Rome two or three times a year for the Games will be interested to hear that the great Aurelian house near the New Temple of Saturn (the rogues with their "Temples!" But still there is a good deal of real religion left in Rome) is being pulled down and a splendid one is being put in its place upon the designs of a really remarkable young architect, Pneius Caius Agricola. He is the nephew, by the way, of Sopher Masher Baal, whom we all know so well at Carthage, and who is, I think, technically, a Carthaginian citizen. Possibly I am wrong, for I remember a delightful dinner with him years ago among our cousins overseas, and he may very possibly be Tyrian. If so, and if these humble lines meet his eye, I tender him my apologies. But anyhow, his nephew is a very remarkable and original artist whom allRome is eager to applaud. When the new Aurelian House is finished it will have a façade in five orders, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, heavy Egyptian on the fourth story, and Assyrian on the top, the whole terminating in a vast pyramid, which is to have the appearance of stone, but which will really be a light erection in thin plaster slabs.
Last Wednesday we had the review of the troops. You may imagine how the Roman populace delighted inthat! There is a good deal that is old-fashioned to our ideas in the accouterments, and it was certainly comic to see an "admiral" leading his "sailors" past the saluting post like so many marines! But it is always a pleasant spectacle for a warmhearted man to see the humbler classes of Rome picnicking in true Roman fashion upon the Campus Martius and cheering their sons and brothers. The army is very popular in Rome, although the men are paid hardly anything—a mere nominal sum. The Romans do not come up to our standard of physique, and I am afraidthe Golden Legion would laugh at them. But they are sturdy little fellows, and not to be despised when it comes to marching, or turning their hands to the thousand domestic details of the camp; moreover, they are invariably good-humoured, and that is a great charm.
It is unfortunately impossible to officer all the troops with gentlemen, and that is a drawback of which thoughtful Romans are acutely conscious. It is on this account that there is none of that cordial relation between officer and man which we take for granted in our service. An intelligent and travelled Roman said to me the other day: "How I envy you your Carthaginian officers! Always in training! Always ready! Always urbane!" But we must remember that our service is not so numerous as theirs.
I must not ramble on further, for the post is going, and you know what the Roman postis. It starts when it feels inclined, and the delivery istantum quantum, as we say in Italy. I have to be a good hour before the official timeor risk being told by some shabbily uniformed person that my letter missedthrough my own fault! Next week I hope to give you an interesting account of Sapphira Moshetim's début. She is a Roman of the Romans, and I was quite carried away! Such subtlety! Such declamation! I hope to be her herald, for she is to come to Carthage next season, and I am sure she will bear out all I say.
My dear Boy:
As you know, I was your father's closest friend for many years, and I have watched with interest, but I confess not without anxiety, your first attempts in a career of which he was in my young days the most brilliant exemplar.
You will not take it ill in a man of my years and in one as devoted to your family as I am and have proved myself to be, if I tender you a word of advice.
The profession upon which you have engaged is one of the most difficult in the world. It does not offer the great prizes which attend the best forms of cheating, bullying, and blackmail, and at the same time it is highly limited, and offers opportunities to only a handful of the finer souls.
Nevertheless, I am not writing this to dissuade you for one moment from its pursuit. There is something in the fine arts difficult to define, but very deeply felt by every one, which makes them of themselves a sort of compensation for their economic limitations. The artist, the poet, and the actor expect to live, and hope to live well, but each one knows how few are the prizes, and each in his heart expects something more than a mere money compensation. So should it be in that great profession which you have undertaken in the light of your father's example.
In connection with that, I think it my duty to point out to you that even the greatest success in this special calling is only modest compared with successes obtained at the Bar, in commerce, or even in politics. You will never become a wealthy man. I do not desire it for you. It should be yours, if you succeed, to enjoy wealth without its responsibility, and to consume the good things our civilisation presents to the wealthy without avarice, withoutthe memory of preceding poverty, and, above all, without the torturing necessity of considering the less fortunate of your kind.
You must not expect, my dear young man, to leave even a modest competence; therefore you must not expect to marry and provide for children. The parasite must be celibate. I have never known the rule to fail, at least in our sex. You will tell me, perhaps, that in the course of your career, continually inhabiting the houses of the rich, studying their manners, and supplying their wants, you cannot fail to meet some heiress; that you do not see why, this being the case, you should not marry her, to your lasting advantage.
Let me beg you, with all the earnestness in my power, to put such thoughts from you altogether. They are as fatal to a parasite's success as early commercial bargaining to that of a painter. You must in the first ten years of your exercises devote yourself wholly to your great calling. By the time you have done that you will have unlearned or forgotten all thatgoes with a wealthy marriage; its heavy responsibilities will be odious to you, its sense of dependence intolerable. Moreover (though you may think it a little cynical of me to say so), I must assure you that no one, even a man with your exalted ideal, can make a success of married life unless he enters it with some considerable respect for his partner. Now, it is easy for the man who lays himself out for a rich marriage (and that is a business quite different from your own, and one, therefore, on which I will not enter) to respect his wife. Such men are commonly possessed, or soon become possessed, of a simple and profound religion, which is the worship of money, and when they have found their inevitable choice, her substance, or that of her father, surrounds her with a halo that does not fade. You could hope for no such illusions. The very first year of your vocation (if you pursue it industriously and honestly) will destroy in you the possibility of any form of worship whatsoever. No, it will be yours to take up with dignity, and I trust insome permanent fashion, that position of parasite which is a proper and necessary adjunct in every wealthy family, and which, when it is once well and industriously occupied, I have never known to fail in promoting the happiness of its incumbent.
Let me turn from all this and give you a few rough rules which should guide you in the earlier part of your way. You will not, I am sure, reject them lightly, coming as they do from a friend of my standing and experience. Young men commonly regard the advice of their elders as something too crude to be observed. It is a fatal error. What they take for crudity is only the terseness and pressure of accumulated experience.
The first main rule is to take note of that limit of insult and contempt beyond which your master will revolt. Note carefully what I say. No one, and least of all the prosperous, especially when their prosperity is combined with culture, will long tolerate flattery. A certain indifference, spiced with occasional contemptand not infrequent insolence, is what those of jaded appetite look for in any permanent companion. Without a full knowledge of this great truth, hundreds of your compeers have fallen early upon the field, never to rise again. For if it is true that the wealthy and the refined demand much seasoning in their companionship, it is equally true that there is a fairly sharp boundary beyond which they suddenly revolt. Henry Bellarmine was thrust out of the Congletons' house for no other reason. The same cause led to poor Ralph Pagberry's imprisonment, and I could quote you hosts of others.
My next rule is that you should never, under any temptation of weather, or ill health, or fatigue, permit yourself really and thoroughly to bore either your patron or any one of his guests, near relatives, or advisers. As it is not easy for a young man to know when he is boring the well-to-do, let me give you a few hints.
When the rich begin to talk one to the other in your presence without noticing you, it is a sign. When they answer what you are sayingto them in a manner totally irrelevant, it is another. When they smile very sympathetically, but at something else in the room, not your face, it is a third. And when they give an interested exclamation, such as, "No doubt. No doubt," or, "I can well believe it," such expressions having no relation to what passed immediately before, it is a fourth.
Add to these criteria certain plain rules, such as never upon any account to read aloud to the rich unless they constrain you to do so, never to sing, never to be the last to leave the room or to go to bed, and you will not sin upon this score.
Let me give you a further rule, which is, to agree with the women. It is very difficult for one of our sex to remember this, because our sex loves argument and is with difficulty persuaded that contradiction and even controversy are intolerable to ladies. Mould your conversation with them in such a fashion that they may hear from you either a brilliant account at second hand of themselves or a very odiousone of their friends; but do not be so foolish as to touch upon abstract matters, and if these by any chance fall into the conversation, simply discover your companion's real or supposed position, and agree with it.
I have little more to add. Be courteous to all chance guests in the house. You will tell me, justly enough, that the great majority of them will be unimportant or poor or both. But the point is that you can never tell when one of them may turn out to be, either then or in the future, important or rich or both. The rule is simple and absolute. Cultivate courtesy, avoid affection; use the first upon all occasions, and forget so much as the meaning of the second.
Lastly, drink wine, but drink it in moderation. I have known admirably successful parasites who were total abstainers, but only in the houses of fanatics with whom this peculiar habit was a creed. The moment these successful men passed to other employers, I was interested to note that they at once abandoned the foolishtrick. But if it is important not to fall into the Mohammedan foible of total abstinence from wine, it is, if anything, even more important never upon any occasion whatsoever to exceed in it. Excess in wine is dangerous in a degree to the burglar, the thief, the money-lender, the poisoner, and many professions other than your own, but in that which you have chosen it is notdangerous, butfatal. Let such excess be apparent once in the career of a young parasite, and that career is as good as done for. I urge this truth upon you most solemnly, my dear lad, by way of ending.
I wish you the best of luck, and I am your poor father's devoted friend and your own.
The best noise in all the world is the rattle of the anchor chain when one comes into harbour at last, and lets it go over the bows.
You may say that one does nothing of the sort, that one picks up moorings, and that letting go so heavy a thing as an anchor is no business for you and me. If you say that you are wrong. Men go from inhabited place to inhabited place, and for pleasure from station to station, then pick up moorings as best they can, usually craning over the side and grabbing as they pass, and cursing the man astern for leaving such way on her and for passing so wide. Yes, I know that. You are not the only man who has picked up moorings. Not by many many thousands. Many moorings have I picked up in many places, none without somesort of misfortune; therefore do I still prefer the rattle of the anchor chain.
Once—to be accurate, seventeen years ago—I had been out all night by myself in a boat called theSilver Star. She was a very small boat. She had only one sail; she was black inside and out, and I think about one hundred years old. I had hired her of a poor man, and she was his only possession.
It was a rough night in the late summer when the rich are compelled in their detestable grind to go to the Solent. When I say it was night I mean it was the early morning, just late enough for the rich to be asleep aboard their boats, and the dawn was silent upon the sea. There was a strong tide running up the Medina. I was tired to death. I had passed the Royal Yacht Squadron grounds, and the first thing I saw was a very fine and noble buoy—new-painted, gay, lordly—moorings worthy of a man!
I let go the halyard very briskly, and I nipped forward and got my hand upon thatgreat buoy—there was no hauling of it in-board; I took the little painter of my boat and made it fast to this noble buoy, and then immediately I fell asleep. In this sleep of mine I heard, as in a pleasant dream, the exact motion of many oars rowed by strong men, and very soon afterwards I heard a voice with a Colonial accent swearing in an abominable manner, and I woke up and looked—and there was a man of prodigious wealth, all dressed in white, and with an extremely new cap on his head. His whiskers also were white and his face bright red, and he was in a great passion. He was evidently the owner or master of the buoy, and on either side of the fine boat in which he rowed were the rowers, his slaves. He could not conceive why I had tied theSilver Starto his magnificent great imperial moorings, to which he had decided to tie his own expensive ship, on which, no doubt, a dozen as rich as himself were sailing the seas.
I told him that I was sorry I had picked up his moorings, but that, in this country, it wasthe common courtesy of the sea to pick up any spare moorings one could find. I also asked him the name of his expensive ship, but he only answered with curses. I told him the name of my ship was theSilver Star.
Then, when I had cast off, I put out the sweeps and I rowed gently, for it was now slack water at the top of the tide, and I stood by while he tied his magnificent yacht to the moorings. When he had done that I rowed under the stern of that ship and read her name. But I will not print it here, only let me tell you it was the name of a ship belonging to a fabulously rich man. Riches, I thought then and I think still, corrupt the heart.
Upon another occasion I came with one companion across the bar of Orford River, out of a very heavy wind outside and a very heavy sea. I just touched as I crossed that bar, though I was on the top of the highest tide of the year, for it was just this time in September, the highest springs of the hunter's moon.
My companion and I sailed up Orford River,and when we came to Orford Town we saw a buoy, and I said to my companion, "Let us pick up moorings."
Upon the bank of the river was a long line of men, all shouting and howling, and warning us not to touch that buoy. But we called out to them that we meant no harm. We only meant to pick up those moorings for a moment, so as to make everything snug on board, and that then we would take a line ashore and lie close to the wharf. Only the more did those numerous men (whom many others ran up to join as I called) forbid us with oaths to touch the buoy. Nevertheless, we picked up the little buoy (which was quite small and light) and we got it in-board, and held on, waiting for our boat to swing to it. But an astonishing thing happened! The boat paid no attention to the moorings, but went careering up river carrying the buoy with it, and apparently dragging the moorings along the bottom without the least difficulty. And this was no wonder, for we found out afterwards that the little buoy hadonly been set there to mark a racing point, and that the weights holding the line of it to the bottom were very light and few. So it was no wonder the men of Orford had been so angry. Soon it was dark, and we replaced the buoy stealthily, and when we came in to eat at the Inn we were not recognised.
It was on this occasion that was written the song:
The men that lived in Orford stoodUpon the shore to meet me;Their faces were like carven wood,They did not wish to greet me.etc.
The men that lived in Orford stoodUpon the shore to meet me;Their faces were like carven wood,They did not wish to greet me.etc.
The men that lived in Orford stoodUpon the shore to meet me;Their faces were like carven wood,They did not wish to greet me.etc.
The men that lived in Orford stood
Upon the shore to meet me;
Their faces were like carven wood,
They did not wish to greet me.
etc.
It has eighteen verses.
I say again, unless you have moorings of your own—an extravagant habit—picking up moorings is always a perilous and doubtful thing, fraught with accident and hatred and mischance. Give me the rattle of the anchor chain!
I love to consider a place which I have never yet seen, but which I shall reach at last, full ofrepose and marking the end of those voyages, and security from the tumble of the sea.
This place will be a cove set round with high hills on which there shall be no house or sign of men, and it shall be enfolded by quite deserted land; but the westering sun will shine pleasantly upon it under a warm air. It will be a proper place for sleep.
The fair-way into that haven shall lie behind a pleasant little beach of shingle, which shall run out aslant into the sea from the steep hillside, and shall be a breakwater made by God. The tide shall run up behind it smoothly, and in a silent way, filling the quiet hollow of the hills, brimming it all up like a cup—a cup of refreshment and of quiet, a cup of ending.
Then with what pleasure shall I put my small boat round, just round the point of that shingle beach, noting the shoal water by the eddies and the deeps by the blue colour of them where the channel runs from the main into the fair-way. Up that fair-way shall I go, up into the cove, and the gates of it shall shut behind me,headland against headland, so that I shall not see the open sea any more, though I shall still hear its distant noise. But all around me, save for that distant echo of the surf from the high hills, will be silence; and the evening will be gathering already.
Under that falling light, all alone in such a place, I shall let go the anchor chain, and let it rattle for the last time. My anchor will go down into the clear salt water with a run, and when it touches I shall pay out four lengths or more so that she may swing easily and not drag, and then I shall tie up my canvas and fasten all for the night, and get me ready for sleep. And that will be the end of my sailing.
Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.