...
I had cursed at him, thought he was trying to make a monkey of me ...
for I had dropped on deck a letter to me from Lephil of the _National_,
and so the crew had learned that I was a poet among them.
But I was not being spoofed ... actual tears of surprise and chagrin
came into the coal-passer's eyes. Then I had been ashamed of myself ...
"Of course I'll go on deck ... mighty fine of you to wake me!" I slid
into my pants and went up the ladder--
To envisage, rapturous, a great, flaming globe of shadowy silver ... and
across it, in a single straight ebony bar, one band of jet-black cloud
... and the water, from us to the apparition of beauty, danced, dappled,
with an ecstasy of quivering silver....
I have met many a man in my wanderings, simple and silent, who felt
beauty like a poet or an artist, without the poet's or artist's gifts of
expression,--with, on the contrary, a queer shame that he was so moved,
a suspicion that, somehow, it was not manly to be moved by a sunrise or
sunset.
* * * * *
I found Penton Baxter, his wife Hildreth, and their child, Dan, living
in two tents, among a grove of trees, near the main building of the
Health Home. These two tents had, of course, board floors, and there
was a woman who kept them in condition ... and there was a rack for
towels, and hot water was supplied by pipes from a nearby building.
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