Very merry, too, is the chirping and singing of the birds that Claus has brought with him. The blackbird strikes an attitude on her perch, like that of a renowned singer on the stage, looks coquettishly round on the bystanders, and sings her "Rejoice in your life." You know she never gets beyond that: but we like to have it said and sung to us: "Rejoice in your life."
On the second evening out.
Now it is night. Manna is alone on deck, looking at the stars. What a wondrous world! Overhead the innumerable stars, and around us the boundless sea. I feel as if I must, on this voyage, let all hard thinking, reflection, and speculation take wings and fly away, in order that I may tread the soil of the New World as simply a man of resolute action. There has always been a vein of romance running through my life and nature. What is it that leads me thither, to stake my whole being in a great crisis of human history? No longer to be a mere spectator, but to act, to live, and, perhaps—no, mother, an inward assurance tells me I shall come home alive from this conflict.
Home! Home! Oh, mother, my soul wings its way across to it, over the boundless billows of life: we are with you, and Villa Eden makes true its name. And yet, if Fate has otherwise decreed, be firm: your son has been perfectly happy; he has enjoyed all the fulness of life. I have had you, father, Manna, knowledge, pure aspirations, action. All has been mine.
Here I sit, and the billows bear me on. We rise and fall with the waves, and well for him who feels, as I now do, that the goal at which he aims is a good one.
It seems as if your hand were on my brow: I am well and free. And, oddly enough, I see myself in my mind's eye, transported to the University town again. Now it is evening; in the parlor at the "Post," the regular guests are seated, who meet there every evening, though, in truth, they cannot endure each other. They sit round a table covered with black oil-cloth, with their glasses before them, discussing the affairs of the world, telling anecdotes, and hoaxing one another, and then the talk turns upon that unsteady adventurer, Doctor Dournay. I am a fruitful theme for them. Tall Professor Whitehead lights a match, and says with satisfaction, "I always knew he would desert Science," and then the everlasting "Extraordinary" says—Enough! I was once on another planet, and believed myself at home there.
* * * * * *
I have not written for five days, and now, mother, the man who is writing to you has been, with his nearest and dearest, in the jaws of death.
We have lived through a storm such as our captain, a seaman of three-and-twenty years experience, has never seen before.
I must confess, I was not among the brave. And, in the midst of the tempest,—such is the double-action of the soul,—I could not help often thinking of the everlasting "Extraordinary," at the long table in the Post, speaking of my death, and lamenting his having abandoned poetical composition: our end would have made a fine subject. The coolest in the midst of the storm were Roland and Knopf. The latter, however, was not with us, but on the forward deck with his betrothed. Manna held me clasped in her arms. We wished to die together.