Jason and his fellows coursed the seas, scanning with eager eyes the cloudy belt of the horizon, hopefully seeking some signs of the Fortunate Islands, of whose indescribable beauty and untold wealth they had heard many surmises.  Day after day they pressed on between the same blank sky and the same blank sea, but there was no token to gladden the eyes of the watchers.  Jason grew impatient at last:  he had called upon nearly all the saints in the calendar, and was growing to be a very poor sort of a Catholic, inasmuch as he doubted the efficacy of his prayers and the ability of saints to answer them.  He didn’t realize that there might be good reasons for their not being answered under the existing circumstances; which is a matter worthy of the consideration of all of us.

The fact was, the Fortunate Islands were not one-half so wonderful as had been represented; and the saints knew it well enough.  Had Jason invested there, as he purposed doing at the time of his embarkment, he might have sunk all that he possessed—­which was little enough to float, as one would think—­and then Maud might have tended her rose-garden and carried fruit-offerings to the sweet-faced nuns till she was gray and limping, for all Jason’s fine notions of independence—­namely, a good income from the rise of stocks in the Fortunate Islands, and two souls and two hearts doing the same sort of thing at the same time, with complete and unqualified success, in that sweet rose-garden on the sunny slope to the southward.

That was the way life went with Captain Jason of the Argonauts, called John, for short, in Dreamland, while the crew growled a good deal at their ill-luck, and began to fear that if things went on in that way much longer they would have more fasts than Fridays in the week.  Those were trying times for all of them, and when land was made at last, and it proved to be a temptation and a snare, Jason ordered a special fast and a mass for the salvation of the souls in imminent peril.  Out in the world at last, thousands of miles from the unsophisticated people of Dreamland, Jason beheld the dread Symplegades rocking their enormous bulks upon the waves, and liable at any moment to swing together with a terrific and deadly crash.  Probably they were whales at play:  it may have been two currents of the sea rushing into each other’s arms:  at all events, it was something deluding, though temporary, and perhaps the selfsame difficulty experienced by the original J. when he went after the original fleece.

My hero was young and unschooled in the world’s wickedness, but he knew that where two opposing elements come together with much force, whatever happens to lie between them must suffer.  What should be done was a question of no little importance to the Argonauts.  Most of them were in favor of running the risk of a collision and letting the vessel drive straight through.  Jason thought this a judgment worthy of young men whose lady-loves give expression to their most sacred sentiments by gifts of pincushions and bookmarks.  But he had something to consider more than they—­yea, more than any other living man—­in exemplification of the pleasing fallacy that besets all lovers in all ages.  Blessed be God that it is so!