'The companion picture—the other edition of The Man I Might Have Been—was,' he continued, 'as different as different could be. It seemed ridiculous that they bore the same name. As I looked upon the first of this pair I felt thankful that I am as I am; but, when I turned to the second, that feeling completely forsook me. For I saw, as I gazed into that face—the face on my immediate left—what I should have been if, jealously retaining all the magnanimous and open-hearted qualities of my early days, I had added to them all the graces and excellences which Christian experience and the membership of the church have made possible to me. But I have done neither the one nor the other. I have lost the high-spirited virtues of my youth, and, like a man who has been walking among diamonds, but has been too indolent to pick them up, I have failed to acquire the ripe devoutness which these later years should have brought. It seems strange now, but on the very last Sunday morning on which I came to church, you were preaching on The Additions of Grace: "Add to your faith, virtue: and to virtue, knowledge." Do you remember? You were saying that the art of life lies in adding virtue to virtue as a mason adds tier to tier or as a tree adds ring to ring. I thought a good deal about it afterwards, and it may have woven itself into my dream. At any rate, I looked into the face beside me; I saw the man that I should have been if only I had added to the generous sentiments of youth the nobler attainments that Christian experience and service offered me; and it was like turning from a masterpiece to a daub when I once more contemplated The Man I Am.
'The third pair did not present so strong a contrast. They might easily have passed for brothers, one of whom had enjoyed greater advantages, and moved in better society than the other. The first of those who presented himself as The Man I Shall Be strongly resembled, except that he was older, The Man I Am. The fact is, I suppose, that, of late years, I have been content to take life, at least on its religious side, pretty much as I found it. I have become complacent, easy-going, readily-satisfied, willing to follow the drift. There was a time, twenty years ago or more, when I used to submit myself to periodical examinations. I tested myself; tried to ascertain whether or not I was growing in grace; felt anxious as to whether the spirit was gaining upon the flesh or the flesh upon the spirit. But of late years I have taken things less seriously, and, now that I have time to think about such matters, I can see that I have settled down to a condition that is perilously like stagnation. Going on at the same sluggish rate for a few more years, I cannot expect that I shall at last differ essentially—except in age—from The Man I Am; and that, I suppose, is why the first of these two seems in some respects to resemble so closely the man that I see each day in the mirror.
'The second—the guest on my immediate right—was a much finer man. He, too, was old; but there was a grace and a sweetness and a charm about his age that was quite absent from the person of his companion. Indeed, but for the association of ideas suggested by the circumstances under which we met, I should never have recognized myself in him. But he has taught me—and I feel that life has been inestimably enriched by the lesson—that, if I set myself to recapture the better qualities that I have lost, and begin diligently to cultivate the graces that I have neglected, I may yet make something of life, and stand, not altogether confused and ashamed, before my Lord at the last.
'I am not sure,' my old friend concluded, 'I am not sure that all this occurred to me in the course of my dream. Much of it has probably suggested itself in my subsequent reflections. In time of sickness and of convalescence a man sees life from a new angle. He is able to do a little stocktaking. And I feel that, in my case, the operation—perhaps because it was particularly necessary—has been particularly profitable.'
Mrs. Sinclair came out to ask if he was feeling chilly. The afternoon sun was certainly sinking; and I am afraid that I had allowed my friend to tire himself in telling me his tale. He made an excellent recovery, however, and, in the years that followed, was at church more frequently than ever. And it may have been a fond illusion of my own, but somehow I fancied that, as time went on, he became more and more like that nobler, lovelier, kindlier self that he had so graphically described to me.
II—THE FISH-PENS
I was holiday-making at Lake King. As a matter of fact, Lake King is no lake at all. It used to be; and, like the Church at Sardis, and like so many of us, it bears the name that it once earned but no longer deserves. In former days, a picturesque rampart of sand hummocks, richly draped in native verdure, intervened between the fresh waters of the land-locked lake and the heaving tides of the Southern Ocean. Then the engineers arrived; and when the engineers take off their coats no man can tell what is likely to happen next. At Panama they split a continent in two. At Lake King they wedded the lake to the ocean. Through the range of sand-dunes they cut a broad, deep channel by which the big ships could pass in and out, and, as an inevitable consequence, Lake King is a lake no longer. But it was not the big ships that interested me. It was the trawlers. I liked to see the fishing-boats come in from the ocean and liberate their shining spoil at the pens. On the shores of the lake the fishermen have fenced off a sheet of water, a quarter of an acre or so in area; and into this sheltered reserve they discharge their daily catch. I never tired of visiting the fish-pens. As I looked down into their clear waters they seemed to be one moving mass of beautiful fish. Never in my life had I seen so congested an aquarium. There were thousands upon thousands, tons upon tons, of them.
'You should row across in the early morning,' one of the fishermen was good enough to say. 'You would see us dragging the pens and filling the boats with the fish that we were about to pack for the market.'
I took the hint, and shall never forget the animated spectacle that I then witnessed. The waters that had previously seemed so tranquil were a seething tumult of commotion. The men were wading up to their thighs dragging the nets through the crowded pens. Thousands upon thousands of splendid fish were fighting for dear life, excitedly darting and flapping and leaping and diving and splashing in a hopeless attempt to escape the enmeshment of the enfolding toils. Netful after netful was emptied into the boats. In half an hour the boats themselves were filled to the brim with the poor stiffened creatures from which all life and beauty had departed.
'And do the fish keep good in the pens for an indefinite period?' I asked my fisherman friend—the man who had invited me across.