What if the night
voiced its pains shrewdly, walls encompassed him; what if its frozen
tears melted on the panes or smoked on the trampled threshold, glowing
logs sent forth a permeating heat, expanding his sense of luxury and
content. What with the solace of the new-found weed, and the genial
brothers of the sea surrounding, tempests offered no terrors to him.
Listen. Perhaps here is some indomitable Ulysses, who, scorning a
blind immortalizer, recites his own rude Odyssey. What exploits! What
adventures on the broad seas and in the new-found wildernesses of the
West! Ah, but a man was a man then; there were no mythic gods to guide
or to thwart him; and he rose or fell according to the might of his arm
and the length of his sword. Hate sought no flimsy pretexts, but came
forth boldly; love entered the lists neither with caution nor with
mental reservation; and favor, though inconsiderate as ever, was not
niggard with her largess. Truly the mariner had not to draw on his
imagination; the age of which he was a picturesque particle was a brave
and gallant one: an Odyssey indeed, composed of Richelieus, sons and
grandsons of the great Henri, Buckinghams, Stuarts, Cromwells,
Mazarins, and Monks; Maries de Medicis, Annes of Austria, Mesdames de
Longueville; of Royalists, Frondeurs, and Commonwealth; of Catholics,
Huguenots, and Puritans.
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