The fair wind that swept the good ship Rainbow away from California’s golden shores carried her quickly into a fresh and purer atmosphere, moral as well as physical. It seemed to most, if not all, of the gold-finders as if their brains had been cleared of golden cobwebs. They felt like convalescents from whom a low fever had suddenly departed, leaving them subdued, restful, calm, and happy.

 

“It’s more like a dream than a reality,” observed Ben Trench one day, as he and Polly sat on the after part of the vessel, gazing out upon the tranquil sea.

 

“What seems like a dream?” asked Philosopher Jack, coming aft at the moment with Watty Wilkins, and sitting down beside them.

 

“Our recent life in California,” replied Ben. “There was such constant bustle and toil, and restless, feverish activity, both of mind and body; and now everything is so calm and peaceful, and we are so delightfully idle. I can hardly persuade myself that it is not all a dream.”

 

“Perhaps it is,” said Philosopher Jack. “There are men, you know, who hold that everything is a dream; that matter is a mere fancy or conception, and that there is nothing real or actually in existence but mind.”

 

“Bah!” exclaimed Watty with contempt; “what would these philosophers say if matter, in the shape of a fist, were to hit them on their ridiculous noses?”

 

“They’d say that they only imagined a fist and fancied a blow, I suppose,” returned Jack.

 

“And would they say that the pain and the blood were imagination also?”

 

“I suppose they would.”

 

“But what if I were to come on them slily behind and hit them on their pates before they had a chance to see or to exert their terribly real and powerful minds?” demanded Watty.

 

“You must ask one of themselves, Watty, for I don’t know much about their views; indeed, I’m not sure that I have represented them correctly, though it’s very likely I have, for there is no species of nonsense under the sun that men have not been found to hold and defend with more or less vigour.”

 

“Would you not call that a proof of the Creator’s intention that man should exercise the investigative powers of his mind?” asked Ben.

 

“I would call it a proof of man’s depravity,” said Wilkins.

 

“What does Polly think?” asked Jack, with an amused look at the child, whose fair brow wore an anxious little frown as she tried to understand.

分享到：