Victoria Cup. 1893.
It is related that Chrysippus, a cynic, killed himself in order that he might sooner enjoy the delights of Paradise. Philosophers do queer things sometimes. Many who are not philosophers kill themselves in order to avoid the miseries of this world; but, as far as I know, this is the only case on record of a man killing himself from impatience to enjoy the pleasures of the next.
Ideas of Paradise are exceedingly various. To the ancients Paradise meant a dolce far niente in the Elysian Fields; to the North American Indians it means happy hunting grounds and plenty of fat buffalo. The Scythians believed in a Paradise of immortal drunkenness and drinking blood out of the skulls of their enemies, and the Paradise that to-day influences the belief of one-fourth of the human race is contained in Chapter X. of the Koran. To Madame de Chevreuse it meant chatting with her friends in the next world. To one friend of mine it was galloping for ever over a grass country without gates. To another it meant driving four horses, with Tim Carter seated at his side. To some, I believe, Paradise means yachting, and for my own part, I think a 200-ton schooner, a ten-knot breeze, and a summer sea hard to beat. Whether yachting approaches one's conception of Paradise or not, I think there are very few of us who, if they do not suffer from that hopeless affection the mal de mer, do not more or less enjoy a life on the ocean wave; it is so fresh and life-giving and so various. 'A home on the stormy deep' we won't say so much about. I have seen two or three storms at sea, but I have never found them pleasant; very much the contrary. There is grandeur, if you like, but there is also terror and horror.
As black as night she turned to white,
And cast against the cloud
A snowy sheet as if each surge
Upturned a sailor's shroud.
This is poetry; but it is true. You look to windward, and you look to leeward; you look ahead, and you look astern, and you feel that, if you are not already engulfed, you probably may be in the next minute.
Dr. Johnson said the pleasure of going to sea was getting ashore again; certainly the pleasure of a storm is getting into smooth water again.
The ideas of pleasure as connected with yachting vary as much as the ideas of Paradise; to one it means steaming at full speed from one port to another; but this becomes monotonous. A friend of mine used to write a letter at Cowes, address it to himself at Guernsey, and then steam, hard all, to Guernsey to get his letter. When he got it he would write to himself at Plymouth, then steam away, hard all again, to get that, and so on; even in steaming you must have an object of some kind, you know.
To another dowagering up and down the Solent, lunching on board, and then hurrying back to dine and sleep ashore are pleasure; to another, sailing with the wind, or against the wind, or drifting when there is no wind, is the ideal of yachting. Certainly that is mine. I have tried both. I have had a steamer and I have had sailing vessels, and if I lived to the age of the Hyperboreans and owned several gold mines I should never keep a steamer for pleasure. In sailing, the interest never flags; the rigging, the sails, the anchors, the cables, the boats, the decks, all have their separate interest; every puff of wind, every catspaw, is a source of entertainment, and when the breeze comes, and, with everything drawing below and aloft, you tear along ten or twelve knots an hour, the sensation of pleasure is complete—if you are not sick.