Part 25 (1/2)
”You must be happy, you senti things good, and, because you find soood yourself Now, tell ood to look upon-in a way,” I qualified
”There are in you all powers for good,” was Maud Brewster's answer
”There you are!” he cried at her, half angrily ”Your words are e clear and sharp and definite about the thought you have expressed You cannot pick it up in your two hands and look at it In point of fact, it is not a thought It is a feeling, a senti based upon illusion and not a product of the intellect at all”
As he went on his voice again grew soft, and a confiding note ca that I, too, were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions They're wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of the, that to dreaht And after all, delight is the wage for living Without delight, living is a worthless act To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead He who delights the most lives theto you andthan are
”I often doubt, I often doubt, the hileness of reason Dreaht is ht; and, besides, you pay for yourthe blues Eht is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate I envy you, I envy you”
He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips fore quizzical smiles, as he added:
”It's from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart My reason dictates it The envy is an intellectual product I areatly weary, wishi+ng he, too, were drunk”
”Or like a wisehe, too, were a fool,” I laughed
”Quite so,” he said ”You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools You have no facts in your pocketbook”
”Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster's contribution
”More freely, because it costs you nothing”
”And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted
”Whether you do or think you do, it's the saet greater value fro what I have got, and what I have sweated to get”
”Why don't you change the basis of your coinage, then?” she queried teasingly
He looked at her quickly, half-hopefully, and then said, all regretfully: ”Too late I'd like to, perhaps, but I can't My pocketbook is stuffed with the old coinage, and it's a stubborn thing I can never bringelse as valid”
He ceased speaking, and his gaze wandered absently past her and became lost in the placid sea The old pri to it He had reasoned himself into a spell of the blues, and within few hours one could look for the devil within hi I remembered Charley Furuseth, and knew this man's sadness as the penalty which the materialist ever pays for his materialism
CHAPTER XXV
”You've been on deck, Mr Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen said, the following s look?”
”Clear enough,” I answered, glancing at the sunshi+ne which streamed down the open companion-way ”Fair westerly breeze, with a pro, if Louis predicts correctly”
He nodded his head in a pleased way ”Any signs of fog?”
”Thick banks in the north and north-west”
He nodded his head again, evincing even greater satisfaction than before
”What of the Macedonia?”