Joshua Slocum Sailed Around The World A Few Years Ago In A Thirty-
Seven-Foot Boat All By Himself.
I shall never forget, in his
narrative of the voyage, where he heartily indorsed the idea of
young men, in similar small boats, making similar voyage.
I
promptly indorsed his idea, and so heartily that I took my wife
along. While it certainly makes a Cook's tour look like thirty
cents, on top of that, amid on top of the fun and pleasure, it is a
splendid education for a young man - oh, not a mere education in the
things of the world outside, of lands, and peoples, and climates,
but an education in the world inside, an education in one's self, a
chance to learn one's own self, to get on speaking terms with one's
soul. Then there is the training and the disciplining of it.
First, naturally, the young fellow will learn his limitations; and
next, inevitably, he will proceed to press back those limitations.
And he cannot escape returning from such a voyage a bigger and
better man. And as for sport, it is a king's sport, taking one's
self around the world, doing it with one's own hands, depending on
no one but one's self, and at the end, back at the starting-point,
contemplating with inner vision the planet rushing through space,
and saying, "I did it; with my own hands I did it. I went clear
around that whirling sphere, and I can travel alone, without any
nurse of a sea-captain to guide my steps across the seas.
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