The Somerset Reporter

For the Reporter.

From New York to Southampton

There is something inexpressibly grand about the ocean, as seen from any point of view, but to realize its grandeur in the fullest sense, we must take an ocean voyage; then, if that awful bugbear, mal de mer, does not seize us, we can get some faint idea of the joys of the deep. To sail for days without so much as a glimpse of land, or tie of life, the sea gulls, who wing their way, following unsteadily the vessel from hope to hope after day upon the sun's hot, heaving water rushing noiselessly on the tumultuous course. To gaze away as far as eye could see, to the distant line where sky and water meet, and see on the tossing, tumbling water, gives us an enlarged idea of the vastness of God's creation, and the littleness of his creatures. And yet, when he looks over the deep, beyond the vast, deep-bounded ocean, man has found a way to master it and, threading the trackless waste, cross from shore to shore and create a highway in the sea for commerce of the nations; his soul exults with him, and he cries out, "And I too, am a man." And then, when the horrors of seasickness seize him and his whole internal system seems deranged, and he feels as if it would matter little whether he stayed aboard or fell overboard, he is apt to moralize, and think what a fool man is to venture into such a wilderness, and he wants to kick himself for daring to undertake a sea voyage. But his penance is brief, and when the spirits resume their normal condition, the soul is again chastened and awed by the immensity of the ocean.

(To be continued)