each side of the boat, and was about returning when I came up.  He had never before beheld such a craft as mine, and did not know what to make of her as she came through the fog.  He soon, however, drew in his lines, and, acting as pilot, set out for the beach, from which we were then three miles distant.  After various twistings and circlings through the mist, the row of sandy hillocks which backs Rye Beach appeared, and in a few moments we pulled through the surf and landed, thus ending one part of my summer’s cruise.

* * * * *

A STORY OF TO-DAY.

PART I.

Let me tell you a story of To-Day,—­very homely and narrow in its scope and aim.  Not of the To-Day whose significance in the history of humanity only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead.  Let us bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand far off pitying.  I have no word of this To-Day to speak.  I write from the border of the battle-field, and I find in it no theme for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes.  The shadow of death has fallen on us; it chills the very heaven.  No child laughs in my face as I pass down the street.  Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray; only in the bitterness of endurance they say “in the morning, ’Would God it were even!’ and in the evening, ‘Would God it were morning!’” Neither I nor you have the prophet’s vision to see the age as its meaning stands written before God.  Those who shall live when we are dead may tell their children, perhaps, how, out of anguish and darkness such as the world seldom has borne, the enduring morning evolved of the true world and the true man.  It is not clear to us.  Hands wet with a brother’s blood for the Right, a slavery of intolerance, the hackneyed cant of men or the bloodthirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to us of the great To-Morrow of content and right that holds the world.  Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there.  The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened down as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour, renews the quiet promise of its coming in simple, humble things.  Let us go down and look for it.  There is no need that we should feebly vaunt and madden ourselves over our self-seen lights, whatever they may be, forgetting what broken shadows they are of eternal truths in that calm where He sits and with His quiet hand controls us.

Patriotism and Chivalry are powers in the tranquil, unlimited lives to come, as well as here, I know; but there are less partial truths, higher hierarchies who serve the God-man, that do not speak to us in bayonets and victories,—­Humility, Mercy, and Love.  Let us not quite neglect them, however humble the voices they use may be.  Why, the very low glow of the fire upon the hearth tells me something of recompense