THE VALUE OF THE COMMON MAN 



165 



ing induces even where men are not clearly conscious that they 

 are in torment. 



The most valuable results I had from my three months of 

 adventure in the St. Lawrence was, in the first place, a bettered 

 sense of what the world was in its larger aspects. It is one 

 thing to behold the sea from the shore and quite another to 

 battle with it for your desires, even for your life. From the 

 rude life I had on that journey there came to me a sense of the 

 actuality of the earth which has served me all my days; near 

 to this sense of primeval earth is the sense of primitive or, at 

 least, uncomplicated men, such as I came in contact with among 

 our fellow seafarers. The unchangeableness of the great water 

 extends to those whose lives are shaped by their dealings with 

 it. Among the provincial sailors I was with the companions of 

 Ulysses. They would have mingled well with the crews of the 

 ships that bore the Greeks to Troy, for they had like souls 

 with the same valor, the same simple faiths and fears. These 

 men taught me much of human nature. I found in them the 

 value of the common man as I probably should have found it 

 nowhere else ; for it is so well hidden in our more organized so- 

 cieties that many persons far more discerning than myself fail 

 for all their lives to see the meaning of ordinary life, and so fail 

 to get the most important teaching the world has to give. In 

 a way, I had been prepared for this coming revelation by my 

 contact with the frontier type of man in Kentucky. But at his 

 best, the man of the forests and plains cannot compare with the 

 seaman in the even, rounded culture of human quality. As I 

 had known him in Kentucky, he was a fine fellow of the con- 

 quering type. He had beaten his brute and human enemies 

 and subjugated the wilderness ; but he had never well learned 

 what it was to follow a leader, to put his life in his chief's 

 hands in a ceaseless war with a mastering deep. I count those 

 brave, stern faces I met in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as my best 

 teachers. 



Here let me turn aside for a word concerning the grim aspect 



