260 



THE OPAL SEA 



The suicide. 



Neither 

 life nor the 

 aea always 

 storm- 

 tossed. 



The main- 

 tenance of 

 life. 



dark sea; a wild plunge, feared and yet urged 

 by some demoniac impulse. Perhaps contact 

 with the water has suddenly dispelled delusion 

 and the repentant one has come strangling to 

 the surface with a frenzied cry for help. Who 

 hears? And what help can avail in night and 

 storm ? There is a swift rush past of the black 

 side of the steamer, a useless clutch at it in 

 the dark, the whirl and seethe and bubble of 

 the water churned by the screws, and a glimpse 

 of a ship's taffrail vanishing in darkness. Then 

 the beat of crested waves, the fierce slash of 

 spray across the eyes, the rush of smothering 

 seas over the defenseless head ; and in the gray 

 morning gulls hovering and calling over a white 

 face awash on the waves. 



But the analogy is misleading. Life is not 

 like the tumult of a storm-tossed sea. It has 

 its quiet periods, its hopeful years, its joys and 

 triumphs and successes. The sea is not always 

 agitated. It has its days of calms, its mornings 

 of brilliancy, its noons of drowsiness, its even- 

 ings of splendor. And the great law of nature 

 that all life shall struggle for existence, that 

 all the old shall pass away and be superseded 

 by the new, that the type shall remain though 

 the unit perish, is the only conceivable way of 

 maintaining the order of the universe and fend- 



