New Britain herald., 1923-09-05
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ism that was the tone Of their genera.
 ton. denying all they could not see
 or hear. holding themselves super.
 ciliously aloof from that gracious
 wonder and simplicity that still blesses
 little children. but here was some.
 thing that was inscrutably beyond
 them. They couldn't laugh it away.
 They couldn't cast fl on with Il phrase
 Of cheap slang; demeaning It in order | to hold firm to their own philosophy
 Of Self Here was something that
 shook their old attitude of self-lovc
 end self-sufficieney to its foundations.
 They thought they knew life. these
 three; they thought they were bigger
 than life. that they had mastered 1t
 and found 1t out and stripped all de-
 lusions from it but nov their uputter-
 able conceit, the pillar Of their lives.
 was threatening 10 fall. This sunlt
 sea was too big for them; foo big and
 too mighty and too old.
 Thetrouble with Ned's generation
 was that 1t was goddess generation:
 the same evil that razed Babylon to the dust Ned and his kind had come to be sufficient unto themselves. They had lost the wonder and fear of life, and that meant nothing less than the loss of their wonder and fear of the great Author of life. To these, life had been game that they thought they had mastered. They had laughed to scorn the philosophies that hundred generations of nobler men had built up with wondering reverence. Made arrogant by luxury and ease, they knew of nothing too big for them. no mystery that their contemptuous gaze could not pene- trate, no wonder that their reckless hands could not unveil. They were drunk with their own glories. and the ultimate Source of all things had no place in their philosophies or their thoughts. It was true that churches | iourished among them, that Charity | received her due; but the old virile 'aith, the reverent wonder the mighty urge that has achieved all | hings that have been worth achieving were cold and dead in their hearts. 3ut out here in this little, wind blown craft, surrounded by an immen- ity of desolation beyond the power of heir minds to grasp, it was hard to
 old their old complacency. Their Id philosophies were barrenly insuffi- tent, and they couldn't repel an ever eepening sense of awe. The wind, weeping over them out of the vast ( ss, was new voice striking the .ughter from their lips and insulting
 coldness that was almost fear in 1eir warm, youthful blood. The sun none now. but soon vast areas, not IT off, would be locked tight with ,e; never the movement of a wave, ever the flash of "a sea-bird's wing yer the wastes; and the thought ,bered them and perhaps hn.nbled lem little, too. Sometimes. alone n the deck at night, Ned was close , the dearest reality, the most pro- ,und discovery that could possibly ,uch his life: that the dreadful , ,irit of God moved upon the face of lese desolate waters, no less than, as
 told in Genesis, at creations dawn. !
 Everything would have been differ r 1t if they had come in a larger boat, r instance, one of the great liners at piled between Seattle and An forage. In that case, likely they V ,uld have had no trouble in retain- a g their old point of view. The . ooding tone of the North would we passed them by; the journey ud still have remained holiday stead of the strange, wandering cam that it was. The reason was nply that on liner they would not we broken all ties with their old e. There would have been games d dancing, the service of menials, cial intercourse and all the super ialities and pretenses that had un-
 now composed their lives. Their rmer standards, the attitudes from lich they regarded life, would have en unaltered There would have en no isolation and thus no darken- , of their moods no haunting u,- ,iness that could not be named or ,cribed, no whispering voices heard { dimly out of the sea. They could ve remained in their own old ram rts of callousness and scorn. But re they were alone-lost and far
 an empty sea, under an empty :. |