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in the classics. What is the use spinning yarns of three, six, ten pound trout, perch or pickerel, when a Catalina fisherman will calmly pull out a photograph and an affidavit asserting that he is the proud fisherman who captured a black sea bass weighing 394, 419, and even 436 pounds with a twenty-one thread line, or a swordfish weighing 339 pounds? There is no wonder that men go away home-back East, for instance, and assert that some of these men use whales for bait.

George Sterling, the California poet, has listened so much to the sea and caught so many of its various songs that I could far more than fill one of these chapters with the wealth of his exquisite interpretations. He loves the sea and shows it in the response of his poems, all of which are songs of beauty and charm. And he is but one of scores of similar writers. Who does not recall Barry Cornwall's:

The sea! the sea! the open sea!

The blue, the fresh, the ever free.

or Bayard Taylor's:

Children are we of the restless sea.

or Byron's:

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll! And then we remember Mrs. Heman's

The breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rock-bound coast

and our minds are led to the Songs of Adventure the sea has ever sung to men. We can see, in imagination, Eric the Red, sailing from Iceland over the western

ocean; Columbus on his memorable voyage; Magellan on his south-bound trip of discovery; Hudson to the finding of his bay. Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, Cabrillo, and all the hundreds of adventurous explorers of the sea and its varied coasts, islands, continents come to mind, and then we think of the songs of adventure sung by the sea to the boys and men of today, even as to those of the past ages. The allurement of the sea has always been powerful. And while, sometimes, because parents were self-willed, obstinate and cruel, just as their sons were self-willed, obstinate and cruel, suffering and sorrow came, because the alluring songs were listened to, I think, in the main, the songs were Divine in their origin, and produced good to those who heard them and joined in with them. As I have written elsewhere I fully believe in the Spirit of Adventure. God gave to us this great world-small though it may seem as compared with the vast universe-that we might study, explore, know and use it, and, therefore, He implanted in many bosoms an insatiable longing to see the strange and alien parts of the earth. If I had my way, even now, and there were no obstacles in the way, I would start traveling afresh and see every land on earth. I would visit every country, endeavor to master its language, familiarize myself with its literature and people, their arts, sciences and social life, and I should deem the time well spent. Why, then, should I ignore this same spirit of adventure

in my son or daughter, or seek to oppose it if it is manifested?

I believe the sea sings God's own songs in which He wants many of us to join-for not only do we thereby meet the natural spirit of adventure in our own souls, but we further the era of larger brotherhood the more we know of other nations. Ignorance and prejudice are two great factors of misunderstanding and war-banish these and friendship and kindly relation take their place. Thus we enlarge the scope of the Great Human Symphony and God Himself leads us in our songs. Every merchantman, every schooner, every sailing-vessel of any kind, every freight and passenger steamer that floats on the bosom of the ocean, and listens to its songs, is furthering the Divine Symphony, so long as it trades honestly and justly.

I hear, too, another song from the depths of the ocean to its surface. It is of the perfection, and beauty, and marvelous variety of the finny tribe. Who but a professional ichthyologist, or a fisherman, really knows much of the glory of the denizens of the sea? Spencer Baird, David Starr Jordan, and his collaborateur, Barton Warren Evermann, grow enthusiastic and exuberant in their descriptions of the rare and unique beauty of the fish of the sea. The pictures they show of the actual colors of some of the fishes of the Pacific and other Oriental oceans are almost unbelievable in their resplendent hues and

dazzling glory. And if you can go out in a boat and watch them in their native element you see how graceful they are, what strength they manifest, how easily they glide along, and at what great speed they travel when excited or alarmed.

At Santa Catalina, too, one finds another Sea Song of Beauty being sung, in which he can join. This is the song of the exquisite and wonderful submarine gardens. By means of a glass-bottomed boat, so planned that fifty or more people can sit and gaze through it at one time, the visitor is enabled to look through the transparent water, to the growths on the bottom of the sea, and the fishes that inhabit them. Professor Holden says:

The charm of this voyage beneath the sea lies in the wealth of submarine verdure, sea weeds; for here are the true forests of the sea, glades and replicas of all the forest scenes of the land.

These are some of the songs the sea sings to me. And yet, like Paul in Dickens's Dombey and Son, I am ever asking:

What are the wild waves saying,

Sister, the whole day long!

In that question that man is ever asking lies one great secret of the sea's wonderful charm-its mystery. Surely it is a Creation of God's for it is so far beyond man's complete comprehension that only as he understands God, and goes through Life Singing with Him, can his soul be attuned perfectly to know and understand the sea.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SONGS OF THE STARS*

WHAT was it led the thinkers, philosophers and poets of the earliest days and peoples to imagine that the "morning stars sang together?" Had they the gift of spiritual hearing-clairaudience? Did the spirit songs of the stars and planets, comets and galaxy, whisper to their spirits? And was it in their waking hours or when asleep?

Certain it must have been that it was accomplished somehow, for never has there been a time when some men did not think and believe they could hear the "music of the spheres." The ancient Egyptians heard it and built and painted their wonderful temple of Denderah with the signs of the zodiac in their joy at the glorious chorus. Ptolemy, Aristarchus, Galileo,

For the astounding facts and figures of this chapter, I am indebted to my learned friend Edgar Lucien Larkin, Director of the Lowe Astronomical Observatory, Mount Lowe, California, the most lucid and popular of our writers on recent discoveries in Astronomy. He has written the following books: "Radiant Energy, ""Within the Mind Maze," "The Matchless Altar of the Soul," "Popular Studies in Recent Astronomy," and has two other books nearly ready for publication, viz.: "Spirit Radium" and "The Second New Testament by Jesus of Nazareth." These books should be in the libraries of all men and women who care to think of the Universe in which their Creator has placed them; and of their Destiny, or to know what are the songs modern Astronomers are contributing to the Universal Symphony. These books may be had direct from Edgar Lucien Larkin, Director Lowe Observatory, Los Angeles, Calif.

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