There is no tediousness of solitude to him who has within himself resources of thought and dream, the pleasures and pains of memory, the bliss and the torture of imagination. It is best to have few acquaintances--or none--on shipboard. Human companionship, at some times, and this is one of them, distracts by its pettiness. The voyager should yield himself to nature now, and meet his own soul face to face. The routine of everyday life is commonplace enough, equally upon sea and land. But the ocean is a continual pageant, filling and soothing the mind with unspeakable peace. Never, in even the grandest words of poetry, was the grandeur of the sea expressed. Its vastness, its freedom, its joy, and its beauty overwhelm the mind. All things else seem puny and momentary beside the life that this immense creation unfolds and inspires. Sometimes it shines in the sun, a wilderness of shimmering silver. Sometimes its long waves are black, smooth, glittering, and dangerous. Sometimes it seems instinct with a superb wrath, and its huge masses rise, and clash together, and break into crests of foam. Sometimes it is gray and quiet, as if in a sullen sleep. Sometimes the white mist broods upon it and deepens the sense of awful mystery by which it is forever enwrapped. At night its surging billows are furrowed with long streaks of phosphorescent fire; or, it may be, the waves roll gently, under the soft light of stars; or all the waste is dim, save where, beneath the moon, a glorious pathway, broadening out to the far horizon, allures and points to heaven. One of the most exquisite delights of the voyage, whether by day or night, is to lie upon the deck in some secluded spot, and look up at the tall, tapering spars as they sway with the motion of the ship, while over them the white clouds float, in ever-changing shapes, or the starry constellations drift, in their eternal march. No need now of books, or newspapers, or talk! The eyes are fed by every object they behold. The great ship, with all her white wings spread, careening like a tiny sail-boat, dips and rises, with sinuous, stately grace. The clank of her engines--fit type of steadfast industry and purpose--goes steadily on. The song of the sailors--"Give me some time to blow the man down"--rises in cheery melody, full of audacious, light-hearted thoughtlessness, and strangely tinged with the romance of the sea. Far out toward the horizon many whales come sporting and spouting along. At once, out of the distant bank of cloud and mist, a little vessel springs into view, and with convulsive movement--tilting up and down like the miniature barque upon an old Dutch clock--dances across the vista and vanishes into space. Soon a tempest bursts upon the calm; and then, safe-housed from the fierce blast and blinding rain, the voyager exults over the stern battle of winds and waters and the stalwart, undaunted strength with which his ship bears down the furious floods and stems the gale. By and