Peripatetic Meditations 



Only the tide could help, it seemed, and it took 

 its own time about it. Now, tinie and tide wait 

 for no man, but we have sometimes to wait for 

 them. They know how helpless we are, in spite 

 of all our boasting, and with them perversity 

 makes its headquarters. Time and tide: I too 

 have had to do with them and grown old in vain 

 contention. That same snag of 1804 still flour- 

 ishes, and not long ago, at low tide, hid itself 

 so cunningly that I was entrapped, but I did not 

 play the part of waiting as grandfather did. I 

 attempted to wade ashore ; and if snags are per- 

 verse, what of mud ? The Crosswicks mud is all 

 suctorial discs. I could scarcely move. To take 

 a step was impossible. My grandfather was 

 wise in his day. The snag held the boat, but the 

 boat held him. I let the snag have my boat and 

 the mud had me. 



"If you had had but patience," I was told, on 

 reaching home, "there would have been less 

 trouble." 



This is as near to a solution of the vexatious 

 problem as we are likely ever to come. Have 

 patience. With it, perversity may be shorn of 

 some of its virulence. The end of life's journey 

 may be reached with both body and soul intact 



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