"Some things—things like that—one doesn't find out by what happens. One sort of knows them to start with. It's funny too, because what I'm so cock-a-hoop about to-night is that life's so full of things just ahead, things that are going to happen. I say, look at that moon; I sort of feel as though I could jump over her if only I tried hard enough!"
"That's what youth lives on," said Boase—"not on what happens, but on what may happen. Every morning when you wake don't you feel—'To-day It may happen,' though you haven't the vaguest idea what It may be?"
"Why, yes, I think that's true," said Ishmael slowly.
"Yes, it's true. It's what youth and hope and courage lives by."
"And old people—what do they live by?"
"Ah, that everyone has to find out for himself. It depends largely on what his middle-age has drawn on, and that's nearly always something more material than what fed his youth. There's only one thing certain—that we all have something, some secret bread of our own soul, by which we live, that nourishes and sustains us. It may be a different thing for each man alive."
"We must each work out our own damnation," said Ishmael, and then could have kicked himself for his own smartness that he heard go jarring through the night. He waited in a blush of panic for some reproof, such as "That was hardly worthy, was it?" But the Parson, ever nothing if not unexpected, did not administer it, though Ishmael could have sworn he felt his smile through the darkness.
"Damnation, salvation, it's much the same thing," said Boase, cheerfully, "though naturally youth likes to use the former word. But the great thing is never to despise the means by which another man attains it. Patience, tolerance, tolerance, patience…."
"Oh, I don't know," protested Ishmael. "I don't think much would get done in the world at that rate, would it?"
"Perhaps not. And you have so much to do in it…. When d'you start?"