For the joy that one gets from any cherished plan is always threefold: there is the joy of looking forward, the joy of the very doing, and the joy of remembering. They are all good, but only the last is eternal. The doing is hedged between limits, and its pleasures are often confused, overlaid with alien or accidental impressions. The joy of the forward look is pure and keen, but its bounds, too, are set. It begins at the moment when the first ray of the plan-idea dawns on one’s mind, and it ends with the day of fulfillment. If the dawn begins long before the day, so much the better.
It was early fall, and we had come in from a day by the river, where we had tramped [pg 181] miles up, to one of its infrequent bridges, and miles down on the other bank. Now we sat before the fire, talking it over.
“If we only had a boat!” I said.
“Boat! What do you want a boat for? You wouldn’t want to sit in a boat all day.”
“Who said I would? But I want to get into it, and float off, and get out again somewhere else. That’s my idea of a boat.”
“Oh, of course, a boat would be handy—”
“Handy! You talk as if it was a buttonhook!”
“Well?”
“Well—of course it is handy—as you call it—but a boat means such a lot of things—adventure, romance. When you’re in a boat—a little boat—anything might happen.”
“Yes,” said Jonathan, drawing the logs together, “that’s just the way your family feels about it when you’re young.”