11. CASTING BREAD UPON THE FACE OF 

 THE WATERS 



A good many years ago when I was a student in Ghent, I spent a 

 holiday with my father in Holland, travelling from place to place 

 across the little kingdom. One night we landed in the island of 

 Texel, and I was at first horrified by its bleakness. At the inn we 

 met two Dutch girls who told us they were spending the whole 

 summer in Texel; they were collecting plants, resting, and having 

 a good time, so they said. The whole summer in that God- 

 forsaken place! I was a conceited young ass in those days (I am 

 quite sure that whatever else I may be I am no longer a conceited 

 young ass) , and the quiet extravagance of these two girls seemed 

 very funny to me. Years afterwards it occurred to me that they 

 had far better grounds for chaffing me than I them, and that 

 sobering thought has come back to me many times since, but 

 never with greater strength than at the time when I was gazing at 

 the sea from the Santa Cruz Mountains of Jamaica, across the 

 Pedro plains. 



Texel had a message for these two girls which I was too im- 

 mature to grasp. I blamed Texel, but the blame came back upon 

 me like a boomerang. When we travel we create everywhere a 

 new environment of which we are an essential part; wherever we 

 may go we meet ourselves more often than other people. I found 

 nothing in Texel because I went there with empty hands. The 

 bleakness of the place was partly the bleakness of my own 

 ignorance. I have learned a few things since then, and to-day 

 should I be a little hasty in condemning things which I do not 

 know, I have but to whisper to my soul 'Texel/' and I stop and 

 ponder. On the other hand, when other people belittle my activity 

 without trying to find out what I am driving at or adjudge me a 



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