I sot there perfectly entranced, and nothin’ occurred to break my rapt musin’s save my pardner’s request for a nut cake and a biled egg, and a longin’ murmer about Coney Island and a wish that he wuz started for there. But that didn’t seem to quell my emotions down. I handed the food to him with a hand that seemed some distance off from my real self.
The first big island we went by wuz called Carleton. Standin’ on it, loomin’ up tall and 30 solemn and mysterious, wuz some high stun towers. They stood up there as if tellin’ us how little we knew. They looked like great exclamation points set there to express the futility of our boasted knowledge.
Who built them chimblys? Who started the fires under ’em? Who drinked the tea that wuz steeped there? What kind of tea wuz it? Did the water bile? How did them tea drinkers feel and look and act while them chimblys carried off the smoke of their fire? What wuz their highest aspirations and idees? What wuz their deepest joy and keenest pain? What goles did they see ahead on ’em, and did they ever set down on them goles? I can’t tell nor Josiah can’t. A hundred years ago one moulderin’ old head-stun leaned over the grave of one of that company. Wuz it a glad or a sad heart that rested there in that ancient grave? Well, the sadness or the joy is jest as much lost and forgot as the smoke that wafted up towards the sky on the June and December mornin’s of 1600 odd.
As I thought of all these things, them lofty towers riz up like gigantick skeleton fingers outstretched mockin’ly. They seemed to be sayin’ to me and Josiah and the world at large, “You 31 may boast of your inventions, your marvels of this age, your civilization, your glory, your pryin’ into dark continents and unexplored regions of land and science. But what do you know anyway? Of what consequence are you? How soon your life and your memory will be utterly wiped out and forgotten. How soon the careless sun will forget the shadow you cast on the earth’s bosom. How soon the green grass of the forgettin’ earth will grow fresh and untrodden and cover up the traces of your eager footsteps, no matter how deep you thought you had made the track you walked in. How soon it is all wiped away as if it had never been. And Mom Nater, instead of weepin’ over your loss, goes on wreathin’ new flowers for new hands to gather, and mebby forgits to drop even a bud on the dusty mound where you lay sleepin’—the sleep of long forgetfulness.
“Of what account are you anyway? Poor blind voyagers, floatin’ by me jest as so many generations have gone past—canoe and white sails floatin’ along, floatin’ along, comin’ in view of me in the fur blue hazy distance, comin’ into the broad light before me and glidin’ off and disappearin’ in the shadows. Forever and ever, new ones comin,’ comin’, goin’, goin’, year after 32 year, generation after generation. And here we have stood calm, settled down, pintin’ up into the heavens where our history is gathered up, where the ones that made our history are gathered like the drops of spray from the river that has washed on the shores at our feet, and then evaporated up agin into the blue sky.”
And as I lost sight of them stun towers in the distance, they seemed to say, “Float on, poor voyagers; float along with your pitiful little crumbs of knowledge and wisdom carried so proudly. How soon the shadows will drift apart to take you into ’em and then close up and hold you there forever. And out of the shinin’ west new faces will come growin’ plainer and plainer as the boat draws near; they will shine out full and clear in front of me and then glide away into the mist—I shall lose sight of ’em jest as I do of you to-day. Comin’! comin’! goin’! goin’! They will look at me and wonder jest as you do to-day, and I will say to ’em jest as I do to you, ‘Hail and farewell!’”
Oh what emotions I did have! And I hadn’t more’n got to this pint in my meditatin’, when I hearn a voice on the off side on me (Josiah wuz on the nigh side).
The voice said, “Oh how I wish I could be 33 put back there jest a minute and see what them tall towers see when they wuz built!”
I felt that here wuz a congenial soul and I felt friendly to him as one would hail a familiar sail when they wuz floatin’ on foreign waters. The voice went on:
“Oh how I wish I could be a fly, and fly back there for a hour.”