know he lived happy ever after. But I
often think of his clear, boyish voice singing, "Show me the way to
the hearts of men."

Gilbert Chesterton, whose genius I hope my friend will some day
appreciate, once wrote a strange "crazy tale," in which he meets a
madman who had stood in a field; and this seemingly silent pasture had
presented to his ears an unspeakable uproar. And he says, "I could
hear the daisies grow!" Well, I have sometimes thought of that when in
some roaring street of London. Could I but hear men and women think as
they pass along! To what a tiny hum would the traffic fall when that
titanic clangour met my ears! I imagine Walter Pater had this thought
in mind when he says, so finely, of young Gaston de Latour: "He became
aware, suddenly, of the great stream of human tears, falling always
through the shadows of the world."

How good that is! But, alas! So few read Pater. It is true men cannot
possibly read everything. To quote another exquisite thinker, who I
fear drops more and more into oblivion: "A man would die in the first
cloisters" if he tried to read all the books of the world. But it
is strange so few read those eight or nine volumes, so beautifully
printed, which are Pater's legacy to us. How they would be repaid by
the delicate dexterity of his art, the wonderful music of his style!
But I digress.

I have no doubt that many monarchs would envy the life of a steamship
captain at sea. Indeed, his duties are non-existent, his XXXX
responsibility enormous. He bears the same relation to his company
that a Viceroy of India bears to the Home Government. So extended were
his powers that he could take the steamer into a port, sell her cargo,
sell the vessel herself, discharge her crew, and disappear for ever.
It is a sad pill for us sentimentalists that those who live by and on
the sea have less sentiment than any others. These masters are wholly
intent on the things of which money is the exchange. They have
never yet seen "the light that never was, on sea or land." Their
utmost flight above "pickings" and "store commissions" is a morose
evangelicalism, a sort of ill-breeding illumined by the smoky light of
the Apocalypse. But they never relax their iron grasp on this world.
Perhaps because they feel the supernal tugging at them so persistently
they hold the tighter to the tangible. They are ashamed, I think, to
let any divinity show through. "And ye shall be as gods" was not
uttered of them. The _