And no wonder--since I had elected to be one of them very
deliberately, very completely, without any looking back or looking
elsewhere. The circumstances were such as to give me the feeling of
complete identification, a very vivid comprehension that if I wasn't one
of them I was nothing at all. But what was most difficult to detect was
the nature of the deep impulses which these men obeyed. What spirit was
it that inspired the unfailing manifestations of their simple fidelity?
No outward cohesive force of compulsion or discipline was holding them
together or had ever shaped their unexpressed standards. It was very
mysterious. At last I came to the conclusion that it must be something
in the nature of the life itself; the sea-life chosen blindly, embraced
for the most part accidentally by those men who appeared but a loose
agglomeration of individuals toiling for their living away from the eyes
of mankind. Who can tell how a tradition comes into the world? We are
children of the earth. It may be that the noblest tradition is but the
offspring of material conditions, of the hard necessities besetting men's
precarious lives.
Pages:
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265