FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13193, 2 June 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.

ill" A AM BUNG I'HILOSOrUKR. As I walk by the shore on this bright autumnal morning-, when a, fresh breeze is blowing landwards fiom the sea. and the waves are tumbling in upon the yellow beach in all the glory of their freedom and their force, my eyes are drawn towards a curious object in the offing, which each successive wave seems to bring nearer to the strand. It is not a boat, and, happily, it is not a man ; for even the strongest swimmer Mould find himself helpless in the encounter with such a sea. Ye* there is something strangely, almost uncannily human about the onward aspect of this thing which is now the spoit 0. the waves. I go down to the very edge of the sea and wait for its coming. Now it appears for the moment 011 the. crest of a breaker, and now it is lost in some watery valley. 1 Jut at last patience is rewarded, and slowly and clumsily the grange object is rolled up to my very feet. '[ see then what it is. It is the iiguie-head of a small ship—a woman bust, 'bedaubed with strange colours, and bearing traces here and there of coarse; clumsy gilding. There is no mark or name by which to identify it; but it tells its own story. It is a piece of flotsam cast np from some wreck which perchance foundered months ago, a relic of one of those numberless little tragedies of which the deep is every year the scene. | It is impossible when looking at this 1111couth and deplorable object, which stares at me with its painted eye in ghastly verisimilitude to the stark gaze of death, to icfrain from some wandering speculations as to where it cam© from, and how it has come 10 pass that this is its end. Where are the other timbers of the gallant ship ot which this carved log- was once the figure-head? What has become of captain and crew? Alas, there is no answer to these questions, save that which is given by the roar of the sea upon the beach. That there once was a. ship "upon those waters which no longer sails upon' the sea, and that it bore hardy and adventurous souls from land to land, this mute relic which the waves have cast tip assures me; but beyond this I know nothing. Whither the ship was bound when she met- her doom, what was the cargo which she carried, and whether those 011 board perished with her. I know not. The flotsam and jetsam of the ocean tell their own story; but it is a story which can never be complete. All through our lives we are continually encountering the waifs and strays, the flotsam and jetsam, which tell us of hopes that have been, brought to nothing. There can. hardly be a house which does not contain stores of wreckage of this description; there is not a human heart that is not full of it. As one turns over the contents of an old writing-desk what broken and discarded treasures of the forgotten past are turned up! Here is the bundle of yellow and faded papers the sight of which carries you back to the earliest years of boyhood and to the ambitious hopes and dreams that tilled your mind when you stood upon the threshold of your life ! What are they, these pieces of flotsam which an accident has cast up at your feet? You turn, them over with a mingled feeling of amusement and pathos. Here is a page of the poem you once began—began and never finished— and which at the time when von were engaged poll it you believed to be hardly inferior to anything you had met with in Byron or Milton. There arc the dusty leaves in which your first attempt at a romance or a five-act tragedy is enshrined. Flotsam and jetsam! The poor survivals of bright hopes that once irradiated your life and filled you with the buoyant confidence of youth. The ship went down long ago; most probably in 110 tempest, but water-logged and helpless because of its own inherent weakness; and all that is left of it are these poor waifs and strays, that have somehow or other been preserved, perhaps by their very insignificance, when, all else has disappeared. lleie, however, as you turn over the contents of this domestic shrine wherein your relics are preserved, are the flotsam and jetsam of an episode in your life at once more tender and more tragical than that which is associated with your boyish dreams of fame and success. It is Thackeray, if I mistake not, who remarks that most men, and women have- .somewhere or other in their secret chamber a certain number of •"decaying vegetables" upon which they are wont to look with sentimental eyes. Yes. here they are; a few withered roses, a dried and yellowed bunch of lilies, perhaps, or only a few leaves, tenderly pressed between the pages of a book. What a. wreck that was from which these waifs have been cast up! As you look at them now you think, with a sensation which is anything but a povous one, that the feelings which were once stirred by ho sight of • these poor relics arc now as dead and dried and withered as these flowers themselves. But none the less is iL a fact that once upon a time the tendercst and purest chords in your heart thrilled with sweetemotion in response to the hopes of which these relics arc the flotsam and jetsam. Where was it that this pale rosebud first came into your possession? Was it in the midst of the glare and noise of the ballloom, when you and She had succeeded in escaping for a moment from the crowd, ind She drew that single bud from the raven musses of hci» hair, and gave it to you to be cherished for ever in memory of that happy evening? Or was it when you walked in the beautiful garden you knew so well once, whilst the long June day -till lingered in the amber sky, and the first sweet pote of the nightingale trembled irom the woods? You can smile now over these relics of the wreck. Was there ever anything so foolish as that boyish passion? \nd yet even as you look at the poor flotsam and jetsam you feel that- the voyage tvhich ended in utter shipwreck, anil of ivliieh nought now remains but this, was till of promise at its beginning ; and that, lever since then have you sailed across seas to sunny as those which lured you to the :atastrophe which these sad relics bring jack to your memory. And in almost every household there are he flotsam and jetsam which recall stories uore tender even than those associated vith the destruction of one's earliest reliance. The gloves stil 1 bearing the shape f the hand that can never again be-grasped : >r the little shoes which served for the vhoie of baby's brief journey from the •radio to the grave; the nook with the nark placed in it ar the point which bad leen reached when the dear eyes were closed or ever: there are many Mich relies of oyages that have come to an end assorted with all our lives. But one would not peak of these as mere flotsam and jetsam brown up by shipwreck. .They ate rather he lelics of" the journey that has come to :s natural It 11 ish : the little things which ad their use and value once, but which re needed 110 more now. We keep them ecause they recall not- the sad. last motent when the weary traveller passed from ur sight for ever, bill the days when he lurneyed by our side and blessed us with is love. The empty nest in the hedgerow ears, no doubt, a certain air of sad nets, ■ it speaks of the spring days when it was lied with the young birds over whom the arent-s brooded tenderly; but it« vtsy

I emptiness is full of a hopeful suggestiveness of the bright summer fields in which the fledged songsters who once, had their home here dwell" now. No; it is hardly to these holy le'.ics of the dead that- we can. apply the title of flotsam and jetsam — '■ save, indeed, in such cases as that which is is memorable in the memoirs of Swift, where e " only a. woman's hair" calls up the sad story y of a shipwrecked life and murdered hopes. , _ There is nothing more interesting, nothing more instructive to the traveller, than ,l to meet with the relics of fallen greatness or h of hopes that once ran high but which have 0 never been fulfilled. As you stand upon the eiumbling blocks of masonry that mark the site of the J'a lace of .Dido, and look down upon the blue waters ot the Mediterra--11 lican gleaming in the hot Southern nm. you e may trace beneath them the outline of the y wharfs and piers and docks of the old port s of Carthage. How well the men who laid these foundations did their work! All I above them rose then the towers and walls of the great- and wonderful city; and ships r 1 ioi every land, and curious travellers from 1 every quarter of the old world, were t brought her by the renown of the place. .. 'I he princes of a vanished race dwelt here I in nimble halls, and the Measures of a continent, were lavished in these streets. And now! All that remains are- yonder a solid blocks of masonry washed by the tideless waters of the Mediterraneiian, the f mere tlotsam ami jetsam of the nobly and . stately city that once ranked among- the wonders of the world. A great American, preacher once founded a powerful argument 11 in support of the grandeur of human uae hire in its perfect: state upon the greatf ness of the ruin of fallen humanity as it is I, known to us now. In the same way itmay be said that some of the most impressive. lessons which men are capable of re- ■ reiving, regarding both the nudities and s the delusions of life, are those which are taught by the crumbling decay of lie hopes , and ambitions that once seemed to he built upon a rock, by the mere flotsam and jet- .- sain cast up by the tide, which speak to us 5 of the wreck of lives and of empires, of - the failures of our fairest dreams and our ) most dating adventures. But the lesson > which the flotsam of the shore conveys to us l is taught nowhere more powerfully than by ( Shelley in his greatest sonnet: — i I met a traveller from an antique land. Who said: "Two vast and trunkless Ir.i.s J of stone i Stand in the desert. Near them oil the sand. ■ Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whoso 1 frown ; And wrinkled lin and sneer of cold command 'fell that its sculptor well those passions read 1 "Which yet survive, stamped on these life- , less tilings. The hand that mocked them and the heart : that fedAnd on the pedestal these words appear: . "My name is Ozymantlias. king of kings: I Look oil mv works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains: Round the decay Of that, colossal wreck, boundless and bare. > The lone and level sands stretch far away."