SEA-WRACK 23 



reached the flukes of the great anchor. Seating 

 myself comfortably, I lashed my leather straps 

 fast, and was ready for work with glass or net 

 or camera. Of course this was possible only on 

 comparatively calm days, but when the sea was 

 mirror-like, with only the low, heaving swells 

 bending its surface, and the flying fish flushed 

 before us in schools, then I had days of good 

 sport. 



This novel method of anchor perching led 

 indirectly to the solution of a very different 

 puzzle. I had been thinking and talking of the 

 congested turmoil of the great city far below 

 the horizon to the north. Looking back on a 

 year in its midst, memory, aroused by present 

 contrasts, registered sham, insincerity, deceit, il- 

 lusion, veneer as dominant notes in civilization. 

 In an argument one evening I had held that 

 deceit or illusion was not of necessity evil, nor 

 when unconsciously self-imposed, even repre- 

 hensible. 



The next day I instanced a rather apt ex- 

 ample. Our very knowledge, our mental mas- 

 tery leads us to false sensory assertions, which 

 become so universal that they develop into ap- 

 parent truisms. Only by a distinct effort may 



