Strong
men with childlike hearts were faithful to it, were content to live by
its grace--to die by its will. That was the sea before the time when the
French mind set the Egyptian muscle in motion and produced a dismal
but profitable ditch. Then a great pall of smoke sent out by countless
steam-boats was spread over the restless mirror of the Infinite. The
hand of the engineer tore down the veil of the terrible beauty in
order that greedy and faithless landlubbers might pocket dividends. The
mystery was destroyed. Like all mysteries, it lived only in the hearts
of its worshippers. The hearts changed; the men changed. The once loving
and devoted servants went out armed with fire and iron, and conquering
the fear of their own hearts became a calculating crowd of cold and
exacting masters. The sea of the past was an incomparably beautiful
mistress, with inscrutable face, with cruel and promising eyes. The sea
of to-day is a used-up drudge, wrinkled and defaced by the churned-up
wakes of brutal propellers, robbed of the enslaving charm of its
vastness, stripped of its beauty, of its mystery and of its promise.
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