Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/186

186THE HALLIG.

"and so I rejoice that I am not exposed to the
trial."
  "But why do you not rather aim to secure something
which will stand even such trials ? Can you regard
that, as the true philosophy of life, which makes us de-
pendent on external circumstances beyond our own con-
trol ? Do you take mica for a gem, because it sparkles
in the sunshine like a diamond ?"
  "You are quite right my dear pastor," said Oswald,
"simply because you are pastor; but wrong for me be-
cause I sing,

    "Forgetting is pleasure,
       And thinking is pain ;
     Then take for the real,
       What seems the most plain."

  "I can give you another verse," said Hold :

    "O childish resolving !
       O folly most stark !
     So billows are tossing
       The rudderless bark.

And these lines remind me to ask you how you
thought and felt in those hours when you were lately
struggling between life and death, on these same
waters."
  "I thought and felt just nothing at all. All thought
and feeling entirely forsook me. I was a hollow shell,
into which the kernel returned only after we were safe.
Of what use would thought and feeling have been to
me ? They would not have tamed the savage sea, nor
have held together the fragile boat."
  "Thinking and feeling would not have helped you,