The good mate said: "Now must we pray, "My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. "What shall I say, brave Admir❜l, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" 'Why, you shall say at break of day: 66 'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'" They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, For God from these dread seas is gone. They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. He curls his lip, he lies in wait, With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave Admir❜l, say but one good word: The words leapt like a leaping sword: Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, And peered through darkness. Ah, that night Of all dark nights! and then a speck — A light! A light? A light! A light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! Sydney Smith once well said: "A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves men who have remained obscure because of timidity. The fact is that, in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the brink and thinking of the cold and danger; but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating risks, and adjusting nice chances. It did very well before the flood, when a man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for a hundred and fifty years, and live to see its success for six or seven centuries afterward. But at present a man waits, and doubts, and hesitates, and consults his father, brother, cousin, friends, till one fine day he finds he is sixty-five years of age. There is so little time for our squeamishness that it is no bad rule to preach up the necessity of a little violence done to the feelings and of efforts made in defiance of strict and sober calculation." Too often elderly friends, with the best of inten * This poem has recently been set to music by Dr. Carlos Troyer, of San Francisco, that is as thrilling and soulstirring as are the words. Copies may be had by sending sixty cents in postage stamps to Dr. Troyer, 1236 19th Ave., Sunset District, San Francisco, Calif. tions, inculcate this fear into the hearts of the young. Never was there a greater mistake or real unkindness. It is nothing that the intent is good. One's intent may palliate any judgment rendered against the offender, but, the unfortunate result, the implanting of the fear, cannot so easily be forgiven. Oh that I could prevail upon older people to refrain from this terribly demoralizing habit of giving advice to the young that inculcates fear. Let me illustrate: A young man is a clerk in an office. He sees an opening to which his heart and brain strongly impel him, but there is a little, perhaps a great deal, of risk connected with it. He goes for advice to his older friends. They, with their life-work practically finished, valuing their rest and content more than desiring to reënter the battle of life, naturally are wary about an uncertainty. "Why not leave well enough alone? Why run the risk? What will you do if this fails? You will have given up a certainty for an uncertainty," and so on. Ah! worldly wise though it seems, it is the most injurious and harmful advice that the young could possibly receive. Where would progress and advancement be to-day if many had not totally disregarded such smug, self-contented, unheroic advice! Thank God, youth is the time for adventure, for striking out, for making mistakes, for learning, for testing, for "proving all things," and holding fast to that which is good. Old age has had its day. It has made its mistakes and profited by them. Let it keep its hands off the young. Let them have their opportunity. Herbert Spencer tells of throwing up a good job as civil engineer in order to experiment with a matter that a fortnight proved to be utterly impossible. Yet fifty years later he thus reviewed this apparently self-injurious act: "Had there not been this seemingly foolish act, I should have passed a humdrum and not very prosperous life as a civil engineer. That which has since been done would never have been done." In other words, the act that shook him out of the rut, the contented, common, mediocre path, compelled him to find a new path for himself, and this called upon all the resources of his great and, to him and others, unknown nature, and he developed into the transcendent genius, the profound philosopher, whose writings had greater influence, perhaps, upon his century than those of any other man. Hence I want to radiate the spirit of complete fearlessness, not only for myself, but for my young friends of both sexes, all the sons and daughters of men. I would calmly watch them plunge overboard into the ocean of life, trustful and confident, having first taught them the first few strokes of swimming the principles of true and godly living and then stand, fearlessly, and watch them strike out for themselves. I swam,- why should not they? God is in His heaven to-day watching the sparrows fly just as He was a score, a hundred, a thousand years ago. In the mental world how fearful people often are of breaking away from old ideas. Only the other day a friend wrote me that he had been to a funeral, conducted by an orthodox clergyman. He said: "I imagine his is a very orthodox denomination, if he is a fair sample of what they believe. Glimmerings of a soul that hungers for larger things than its creed allowed was evident in his talk, however. Is it not pitiful, and more, is it not tragical, how people allow their soul-instincts and natural outreachings to be killed, or hampered, or stilled by what their befuddled brains or the brains of others have decided is proper, or accepted as proper, to believe?" I can remember when good Methodists and Congregationalists were "kicked out of the church " for daring to hope that all men would ultimately be saved, and I have heard preachers and doctors fulminating against Christian Science and everything else that did not conform exactly to what they believed, and seeking to work upon the fears of their congregations to prevent any investigation. This kind of fear is unworthy the human soul. |