Be That As It May, There Is No Doubt That I Soon
Wearied And Came Ashore Again, And That It Gives Me More Pleasure
To Recall The Man Himself And His Simple, Happy Conversation, So
Full Of Gusto And Sympathy, Than Anything Possibly Connected With
His Crank, Insecure Embarkation.
In order to avoid seeing him, for
I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy his
treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at
all prices, to find some other way back into the town in time for
dinner.
As I went, I was thinking of Smethurst with admiration; a
look into that man's mind was like a retrospect over the smiling
champaign of his past life, and very different from the Sinai-
gorges up which one looks for a terrified moment into the dark
souls of many good, many wise, and many prudent men. I cannot be
very grateful to such men for their excellence, and wisdom, and
prudence. I find myself facing as stoutly as I can a hard,
combative existence, full of doubt, difficulties, defeats,
disappointments, and dangers, quite a hard enough life without
their dark countenances at my elbow, so that what I want is a
happy-minded Smethurst placed here and there at ugly corners of my
life's wayside, preaching his gospel of quiet and contentment.
ANOTHER
I was shortly to meet with an evangelist of another stamp. After I
had forced my way through a gentleman's grounds, I came out on the
high road, and sat down to rest myself on a heap of stones at the
top of a long hill, with Cockermouth lying snugly at the bottom.
An Irish beggar-woman, with a beautiful little girl by her side,
came up to ask for alms, and gradually fell to telling me the
little tragedy of her life.
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