"I have stood on the shore of Lake Michigan on a stormy day in December and the rhythm of that lake seemed to be the echo of the march of the universe treading its victorious way into the future. It is about something—its face is steadfastly set to go to Jerusalem. The firmness of great souls is but its child and copy; and responded to, it is the breeder of great souls.
"Now until we become alive to the expressiveness of purpose in nature, a purpose expressed in feeling and ready to lackey man in his pilgrimage, we fail to understand nature and lose much of the blessedness of living in this world.
"And my simple question is, how comes about this expressiveness? Why, simply there is a person who is projecting himself through this embodiment and it is the revelation of him, just as our friends' ways express the person of the friend behind them."
How grand are those words! And how helpful to men who desire the very co-operation of the seas in fulfilling their plans in unifying the races! For if Prof. Blaisdell was thus inspired with the thought of the co-operation of the waters of Lake Michigan with the historic purposes of man, what should the true freeman feel as he looks out over the Pacific? I can only tell you what I have felt in the words on the following page:
THE ALTRUISM OF THE SEA
Free from the intrusion of littleness,
Standing on the shores of our great Western Sea,
My groping thoughts, O sea,
Now grapple with thy tempestuous waves.
My ecstatic soul argues with thy gales for an interpretation of the message flowing clean and strong from the "million-acred meadows" of the out-lying seas.
My straining ear listens to the clamorous, reiterating almost uninvokable voice of thy tides.
For able to speak to man, like brooks and flowers,
I am inquiring, what you are about, the knowledge of your place in the amelioration of the world?
* * * * *
And lo, now nature's cord is struck,
The secret word is caught,
And this is what I hear
As again I plead, "thou are not a purposeless, lifeless plangent deep.
O great sea, who's purpose doest thou fulfill?
What are thou almightily about, what doing?"