Shoals

Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances.

"Thither we sailed, when, rising with the wave, / Orion dashed us on the shoals, the prey / of wanton winds, and mastering billows drave / our vessels on the pathless rocks astray. / We few have floated to your shore."

Life is like a river with a source and a mouth. Each of us has our own river. One person may have one that is twisting and serpentine, with shallow water in the shoals, so one must plod, not float. Another's is stormy, seething, carrying water furiously, flying one hundred thousand miles until it meets another river and loses its impetuosity and noisiness, and then calmly moves forward to the mouth. There are also streams, short and transparent, like the life of a baby.

Sometimes there was only the width of the road between the imposing precipices on the right and the clear cool water on the left with its shoals of uncatchable fish skimming about through the bars of sun and shadow; and sometimes, in place of the precipices, the grassy land stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant, and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets, the peculiarly captivating cottage of Switzerland.