I am not sanguine.  I can take care of myself, but I am never really sure about many other people, and I had good reason for not being sure of myself.  One thing is certain, and that is that the creeping enemy is sure to attack the very last man or woman whom you would expect to see attacked.  When the first symptoms are seen, the stricken one should be delivered from ennui as much as possible, and then some friend should tell, in dull, dry style, the slow horror of the drop to the Pit.  Fear will be effective when nothing else will.  Many are stronger than I am and can help more.  By the memory of broken hearts, by the fruitless prayers of mothers and sorrowing wives, for the sake of the children who are forced to stay on earth in a living death, I ask the strong to help us all.  Blighted lives, wrecked intellects, wasted brilliancy, poisoned morality, rotted will—­all these mark the road that the King of Evils takes in his darksome progress.  Out of the depths I have called for aid and received it, and now I ask aid for others, and I shall not be denied.

October, 1889.

VOYAGING AT SEA

A philosopher has described the active life of man as a continuous effort to forget the facts of his own existence.  It is vain to pin such philosophers to a definite meaning; but I think the writer meant vaguely to hint in a lofty way that the human mind incessantly longs for change.  We all crave to be something that we are not; we all wish to know the facts concerning states of existence other than our own; and it is this craving curiosity that produces every form of social and spiritual activity.  Yet, with all this restless desire, this uneasy yearning, only a few of us are ever able to pass beyond one piteously narrow sphere, and we rest in blank ignorance of the existence that goes on without the bounds of our tiny domain.  How many people know that by simply going on board a ship and sailing for a couple of days they would pass practically into another moral world, and change their mental as well as their bodily habits?  I have been moved to these reflections by observing the vast amount of nautical literature which appears during the holiday season, and by seeing the complete ignorance and misconception which are palmed off upon the public.  It is a fact that only a few English people know anything about the mightiest of God’s works.  To them life on the ocean is represented by a series of phrases which seem to have been transplanted from copy-books.  They speak of “the bounding main,” “the raging billows,” “seas mountains high,” “the breath of the gale,” “the seething breakers,” and so on; but regarding the commonplace, quiet everyday life at sea they know nothing.  Strangely enough, only Mr. Clark Russell has attempted to give in literary form a vivid, veracious account of sea-life, and his thrice-noble books are far too little known, so that the strongest maritime nation in the whole world is ignorant of vital facts concerning