Their easy, matter-of-fact, everyday
knowledge is richly wonderful. It would seem natural for these
young-young men to question these old-young men of that which they
desire so ardently to know; but that isn't done, you know. So they sit
tight, and pretend they are not listening, and feast their ears on the
wonderful syllables--Ankobar, Kabul, Peshawur, Annam, Nyassaland,
Kerman, Serengetti, Tanganika, and many others. On these beautiful
syllables must their imaginations feed, for that which is told is as
nothing at all. Adventure there is none, romance there is none, mention
of high emprise there is none. Adventure, romance, high emprise have to
these men somehow lost their importance. Perhaps such things have been
to them too common--as well mention the morning egg. Perhaps they have
found that there is no genuine adventure, no real romance except over
the edge of the world where the rainbow stoops.
The bus rattles in and rattles out again. It takes the fresh-faced young
men down past the inner harbour to where lie the tall ships waiting.
They and their cargo of exuberance, of hope, of energy, of thirst for
the bubble adventure, the rainbow romance, sail away to where these
wares have a market. And the quiet men glide away to the North. Their
wares have been marketed. The sleepy, fierce, passionate, sunny lands
have taken all they had to bring. And have given in exchange?
Indifference, ill-health, a profound realization that the length of days
are as nothing at all; a supreme agnosticism as to the ultimate value of
anything that a single man can do, a sublime faith that it must be done,
the power to concentrate, patience illimitable; contempt for danger,
disregard of death, the intention to live; a final, weary estimate of
the fact that mere things are as unimportant here as there, no matter
how quaintly or fantastically they are dressed or named, and a
corresponding emptiness of anticipation for the future--these items are
only a random few of the price given by the ancient lands for that which
the northern races bring to them.
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