Ships and Havens (Classic Reprint) PDF Download

Author: Henry Van Dyke
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9781528167994
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
Excerpt from Ships and Havens F all the things that man has made, 1 none is so full of interest and charm, 9 none possesses so distinct a life and character of its own, as a ship. Ships are but boards, says Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. But we feel that this is a thoroughly wooden opinion, one of those literal judgments which stick to the facts and miss the truth. Ships have something more in them than the timbers of which they are made. Human thought and human labor and human love, - the designer's clever con ception, the builder's patient toil, the explor er's daring venture, the merchant's costly enterprise, the sailor's loyal affection, the traveller's hopes and fears, - all the manifold sympathies of humanity, inform the dumb pil grims of the sea with a human quality. There is a spirit within their oaken ribs, a signifi cance in their strange histories. The common language in which we speak of them is an unconscious confession of this feeling. We say of a ship, She sails well. She minds her helm quickly. The wind is against her, but she makes good headway. We wish her a prosperous voyage. We en dow her with personality; and, as if to ac knowledge the full measure of our interest, Iwe express it in terms which belong to the more interesting sex. One reason for this is undoubtedly the fact that the ship appears to us as a traveller to an unseen, and often an unknown, haven. It is the element of mystery, of adventure, of movement towards a secret goal, that fasci nates our imagination, and draws our sympa thy after it. When this is wanting, the ship loses something of her enchantment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.