Having matured in the surroundings and under the special conditions of sea-life, I have a special piety towards that form of my past; for its impressions were vivid, its appeal direct, its demands such as could be responded to with the natural elation of youth and strength equal to the call.  There was nothing in them to perplex a young conscience.  Having broken away from my origins under a storm of blame from every quarter which had the merest shadow of right to voice an opinion, removed by great distances from such natural affections as were still left to me, and even estranged, in a measure, from them by the totally unintelligible character of the life which had seduced me so mysteriously from my allegiance, I may safely say that through the blind force of circumstances the sea was to be all my world and the merchant service my only home for a long succession of years.  No wonder then that in my two exclusively sea books, “The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’” and “The Mirror of the Sea” (and in the few short sea stories like “Youth” and “Typhoon"), I have tried with an almost filial regard to render the vibration of life in the great world of waters, in the hearts of the simple men who have for ages traversed its solitudes, and also that something sentient which seems to dwell in ships—­the creatures of their hands and the objects of their care.

One’s literary life must turn frequently for sustenance to memories and seek discourse with the shades; unless one has made up one’s mind to write only in order to reprove mankind for what it is, or praise it for what it is not, or—­generally—­to teach it how to behave.  Being neither quarrelsome, nor a flatterer, nor a sage, I have done none of these things; and I am prepared to put up serenely with the insignificance which attaches to persons who are not meddlesome in some way or other.  But resignation is not indifference.  I would not like to be left standing as a mere spectator on the bank of the great stream carrying onwards so many lives.  I would fain claim for myself the faculty of so much insight as can be expressed in a voice of sympathy and compassion.

It seems to me that in one, at least, authoritative quarter of criticism I am suspected of a certain unemotional, grim acceptance of facts; of what the French would call secheresse du coeur.  Fifteen years of unbroken silence before praise or blame testify sufficiently to my respect for criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.  But this is more of a personal matter, reaching the man behind the work, and therefore it may be alluded to in a volume which is a personal note in the margin of the public page.  Not that I feel hurt in the least.  The charge—­if it amounted to a charge at all—­was made in the most considerate terms; in a tone of regret.