like pumpkins with a stick thrust through them, at
night they remind us of grotesque lanterns made out of those same
pumpkins with illuminated slits and slashes.

I find no small entertainment and suggestion in watching the
manoeuvres of the skilful pilots. A novice might hastily conclude that
it was a simple matter to steer a boat from one side of the river to
another. But let him try, and see where he will bring up. The process is
as nice a one and as scientific as a game of billiards. The exact stage
of the tide and volume of the current, the velocity and direction of the
wind, the ice on the river, the approaching or anchored vessels, and
all of them in their mutual relations, have to be calculated with
mathematical precision, especially in entering the narrow slip: so that
the directest way is often the longest way around. Is there not here an
object-lesson for those who would live wisely in this narrow transit
which we call life? Keep your eye upon the one point to which you know
the higher powers call you; but do not think that you are going to march
straight there by force of will, or straight there at all. You are in a
world full of cross-purposes and counter-currents and side-winds, of
accumulated conservatisms and masses of mere inertia and oppositions
which straddle or shoulder themselves across your path. You will
probably wreck your undertakings, and will certainly waste your strength
in needless collisions and shovings aside, unless you take all these
things into account. The capacity to do this is wisdom, as distinct from
knowledge or right intentions, in any sphere of life. Herein is
practical statesmanship, effective reform, everything which has to do
with human wills and the course of this world.

But it is not always practicable, even to the most stalwart and seasoned
passenger, to spend his time on the open deck. To stand out on the front
(one can hardly call it a prow, where the periphery is that of an
average wash-tub) or at the stern is to be drowned by rain or sawn
asunder by icy winds or broiled like an oyster, and to cower under the
upper deck is to get a lively sense of the Cave of the Winds. One with a
healthy sense of smell and an instinct for oxygen may well shrink from
entering the cabin, and prefer the perils and discomforts of too much
atmosphere to those of a depleted and poisoned one. David may have been
wise in choosing to be punished for his sins by pestilence rather than
by famine