One of the commonest of common similes is the simile of life and a river. But as it is not because a thing is rare that it must needs be sweet, so it is not because a thing is common that it must needs be true. Every river fulfils its mission: does every life? More like a stream than a river is life. Trace the stream, from the inconsiderable bubbling of a mountain spring, down the hillsides, over rocks, through glades lighted by sunlight and moonlight, through tortuous defiles and rocky chasms, into a sparkling current, which swells and swells and grows into a lovely channel, or into a sullen rill, which drips and drips and loses itself in a puddle. When Joshua's ship had sailed, gloom fell upon the house of the Marvels: the sunshine that used to warm it no longer shone on it. George Marvel showed his grief more plainly than did his good woman. He was more gentle towards her, and sometimes his gentleness of manner took the form of submission. Singularly enough she was seriously distressed at the change. She wished him to be positive and contradictory, as he used to be; to scold her and put her down, as he used to do; to be more masterful and less gentle. She strove in all sorts of ways to bring back his old humor; she tried his temper by opposing him in trivial matters; she contradicted him when he spoke; and she even ventured, on two or three occasions, to tell him that he would have to wait for his meals--which waiting for one's meals, as is well known, is one of the leading causes of domestic differences. But all her well-meant efforts were thrown away; and when she saw him sit down patiently on being told, with assumed snappishness, that tea wouldn't be ready for half an hour, she gave it up as a bad job, and, acting wisely, left time to cure him. It _did_ cure him, as it cures greater griefs; but in the mean time he suffered greatly. The fact of it was, George Marvel was troubled in his mind at the prominent part he had taken in influencing Joshua's choice of a profession. Having driven his son to sea, he felt as if he had a hand in every storm, and as if he were in some measure responsible for every gust of wind, inasmuch as it expressed danger to Joshua. Then the thought of Joshua's being shipwrecked haunted him. "Suppose Josh is shipwrecked, father," his wife had said, "what would you say then? You'd lie awake night after night, father--you know you would--and wish he had been a wood-turner." "Maggie was right," he admitted to himself; "it would have been better for Josh, and happier for all us, if he had remained at home and been a wood-turner."