No More Learning

Away in the
valley yonder among the corn and the poppies men may well forget all
things except the warmth of the sun upon the face, and the kind shadow
under the hedge; but he who journeys through storm and darkness must
needs think and think. One July a couple of years ago I took my supper
with a Captain Moran on board the ss. _Margaret_, that had put into a
western river from I know not where. I found him a man of many notions
all flavoured with his personality, as is the way with sailors. He
talked in his queer sea manner of God and the world, and up through all
his words broke the hard energy of his calling.

'Sur,' said he, 'did you ever hear tell of the sea captain's prayer? '

'No,' said I; 'what is it? '

'It is,' he replied, '"O Lord, give me a stiff upper lip. "'

'And what does that mean? '

'It means,' he said, 'that when they come to me some night and wake me
up, and say, "Captain, we're going down," that I won't make a fool o'
meself. Why, sur, we war in mid Atlantic, and I standin' on the bridge,
when the third mate comes up to me lookin' mortial bad. Says he,
"Captain, all's up with us. " Says I, "Didn't you know when you joined
that a certain percentage go down every year? " "Yes, sur," says he; and
says I, "Arn't you paid to go down? " "Yes, sur," says he; and says I,
"Then go down like a man, and be damned to you!
"'




CONCERNING THE NEARNESS TOGETHER OF HEAVEN, EARTH, AND PURGATORY


IN Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far
apart. I have heard of a ghost that was many years in a tree and many
years in the archway of a bridge, and my old Mayo woman says, 'There
is a bush up at my own place, and the people do be saying that there
are two souls doing their penance under it. When the wind blows one way
the one has shelter, and when it blows from the north the other has
shelter. It is twisted over with the way they be rooting under it for
shelter. I don't believe it, but there is many a one would not pass
by it at night. ' Indeed there are times when the worlds are so near
together that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than
the shadows of things beyond. A lady I knew once saw a village child
running about with a long trailing petticoat upon her, and asked the
creature why she did not have it cut short. 'It was my grandmother's,'
said the child; 'would you have her going about yonder with her
petticoat up to her knees, and she dead but four days? ' I have read
a story of a woman whose ghost haunted her people because they had
made her grave-clothes so short that the fires of purgatory burned her
knees. The peasantry expect to have beyond the grave houses much like
their earthly homes, only there the thatch will never go leaky, nor
the white walls lose their lustre, nor shall the dairy be at any time
empty of good milk and butter. But now and then a landlord or an agent
or a gauger will go by begging his bread, to show how God divides the
righteous from the unrighteous.

1892 and 1902.




THE EATERS OF PRECIOUS STONES


SOMETIMES when I have been shut off from common interests, and have
for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint
and shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world
under my feet. Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond
the power of my will to alter in any way. They have their own will,
and sweep hither and thither, and change according to its commands.
One day I saw faintly an immense pit of blackness, round which went
a circular parapet, and on this parapet sat innumerable apes eating
precious stones out of the palms of their hands.