It Was A Grand Motion, So Slow
And Stately, This "Standing Out," As The Phrase Is, Expressing
The Gradual And Steady Progress Of A Vessel, As If It Were By
Mere Rectitude And Disposition, Without Shuffling.
Their sails,
which stood so still, were like chips cast into the current of
the air to show which way it set.
At length the boat which we
had spoken came along, keeping the middle of the stream, and when
within speaking distance the steersman called out ironically to
say, that if we would come alongside now he would take us in tow;
but not heeding his taunt, we still loitered in the shade till we
had finished our lunch, and when the last boat had disappeared
round the point with flapping sail, for the breeze had now sunk
to a zephyr, with our own sails set, and plying our oars, we shot
rapidly up the stream in pursuit, and as we glided close
alongside, while they were vainly invoking Aeolus to their aid,
we returned their compliment by proposing, if they would throw us
a rope, to "take them in tow," to which these Merrimack sailors
had no suitable answer ready. Thus we gradually overtook and
passed each boat in succession until we had the river to
ourselves again.
Our course this afternoon was between Manchester and Goffstown.
- - - - - - -
While we float here, far from that tributary stream on whose
banks our Friends and kindred dwell, our thoughts, like the
stars, come out of their horizon still; for there circulates a
finer blood than Lavoisier has discovered the laws of, - the
blood, not of kindred merely, but of kindness, whose pulse still
beats at any distance and forever.
True kindness is a pure divine affinity,
Not founded upon human consanguinity.
It is a spirit, not a blood relation,
Superior to family and station.
After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or
unconscious behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more
emphasis than the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made
aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been
times when our Friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty
a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven
unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what
we aspired to be. There has just reached us, it may be, the
nobleness of some such silent behavior, not to be forgotten, not
to be remembered, and we shudder to think how it fell on us cold,
though in some true but tardy hour we endeavor to wipe off these
scores.
In my experience, persons, when they are made the subject of
conversation, though with a Friend, are commonly the most prosaic
and trivial of facts. The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we
begin to discuss the character of individuals. Our discourse all
runs to slander, and our limits grow narrower as we advance. How
is it that we are impelled to treat our old Friends so ill when
we obtain new ones?
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