Sometimes it would seem that a very little kindly explanation on the
part of the elder would set the younger at a point of view where greater
sympathy would be possible. The great demand of the young is for some
form of poetry in their lives and surroundings; and it is largely the
fault of the old if the poetry of one generation is almost invariably
the prose of the next.
Those "Atlantic liners" are an illustration of my meaning. To the young
Mesuriers they were hideous chromo-lithographs in vulgar gilt frames,
arbitrary defacements of home; but undoubtedly even they would have
found a tolerant tenderness for them, had they realised that they
represented the poetry--long since renounced and put behind him--of
James Mesurier's life. He had come of a race of sea-captains, two of his
brothers had been sailors, and deep down in his heart the spirit of
romance answered, with voice fresh and young as ever, to any breath or
association of the sea. But he seldom, if ever, spoke of it, and only in
an anecdote or two was it occasionally brought to mind. Sometimes his
wife would tease him with the vanity which, on holidays by the sea,
would send him forth on blustering tempestuous nights clad in a
greatcoat of blue pilot-cloth and a sealskin cap, and tell how proud he
was on one occasion, as he stood on the wharf, at being addressed as
"captain," and asked what ship he had brought into port.
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