The steamship Uncle Sam, built 1852, from the National Park Service
This is from pages 7-15 of the 2024 print edition
THE MAN.
HE used to pace rapidly up and down the deck for a minute or two, and then, suddenly striking his forehead, as if a new thought were just pangfully coming into being at the major foci of his soul, he would throw himself prone upon one of the after seats of the old “Uncle Sam,” the steamer in which we were going from San Francisco to Panama, and there he would lie, apparently musing, and evidently enjoying some sort of interior life, but whether that life was one of reverie, dream, or disembodiedness, was a mystery to us all, and would have remained so, but that on being asked, he very complaisantly satisfied our doubts, by informing us that on such occasion he, in spirit, visited a place not laid down in ordinary charts, and the name of which was the realm of “Wotchergifterno,” which means in English, “Violinist’s Meadow” (very like “Fiddler’s Green”). When not pacing the deck, or reclining, or gazing at the glorious sunsets on the sea, or the still more gorgeous sun-risings on the mountains, he was in the habit of—catching flies; which flies he would forthwith proceed to dissect and examine by means of a microscope constructed of a drop of water in a bent broom wisp. Gradually the man became quite a favorite with both passengers and officers of the ship, and not a day passed but a crowd of ladies and gentlemen would gather around him to listen to the stories he would not merely recite, but compose as he went along, each one containing a moral of more than ordinary significance. It was apparent from the first that the man was some sort of a mystic, a dreamer, or some such out-of-the-ordinary style of person, because everything he said or did bore an unmistakable ghostly impress. He was sorrowful withal, at times, and yet no one on the ship had a greater or more humorous flow of spirits. In the midst, however, of his brightest sallies, he would suddenly stop short, as if at that moment his listening soul had caught the jubilant cry of angels when God had just pardoned some sinful, storm-tossed human soul the nature of that mysterious thing called the human soul, and in which our fellow passenger had, as usual, taken a leading part, with the endeavor to elicit, as well as impart, information, he suddenly changed color, turned almost deathly pale, and for full five minutes, perhaps more, looked straight into the sky, as if gazing upon the awful and ineffable mysteries of that weird Phantom-land which intuition demonstrates, but cold reason utterly rejects or challenges for tangible proof. Long, and steadily gazed the man; and then he shuddered—shuddered as if he had just received some fearful, solution of the problem near his heart. And I shuddered also— in pure sympathy with what I did not fairly understand. At length he spoke; but with bated breath, and in tones so low, so deep, so solemn, that it seemed as though a dead, and. not a living man, gave, utterance to the sounds: “Lara! Lara! Ah, Lovely I would that I had gone then—that I were with thee now!” and he relapsed into silence.
Surprised, both at his abruptness, change of manner and theme—for ten minutes before, and despite the solemnity of the conversational topic, he had been at a fever—heat of fun and hilarity—I asked him what he meant. Accustomed, as we had been, to hear him break in upon the most grave and dolorous talk with a droll observation which instantly provoked the most unrestrainable, hilarious mirth; used, as we had been to hear him perpetrate a joke, and set us all in roar in the very midst of some heart-moving tale of woe, whereat our eyes had moistened, and our pulses throbbed tumultuously, yet I was not, even by all this, prepared for the singular characteristic now presented. In reply to my question, he first wiped away an involuntary tear, as if ashamed of his weakness; then raised his head, and exclaimed: “Lara! Lara! The Beautiful One!”
“What of her?” asked Colbert, who, sat opposite him and who was deeply moved .at his evident distress, and whose curiosity, as that of us all, was deeply piqued.
“Listen” said he, “and I will tell you;” and then, while we eagerly drank in his words, and strove to drink in their strange and wondrous meaning (first warning us that what he was about to say was but the text of something to be thereafter told), he leaned back upon the taffrail, and while the steamer gently plowed her way toward Acapulco and far-off Panama, said…
The contemplation of such a possibility was bitter, very bitter—even like unto painful death—and yet it seemed true that failure had been mine—failure, notwithstanding men by thousands spoke well of me and of my works—the children of my thought—and bought my books in thousands. Failure? My soul rejected the idea in utter loathing. For a moment the social spirit, the heartness of my nature over-shadowed Reason, and caused me to forget that, even though confined by dungeon walls, stricken with poverty, deformity, sin or disease—even though left out to freeze in the cold world’s spite—yet the thinker is ever the world’s true— and only King. I had become, for a moment, oblivious of the fact that failure was an impossibility. Rosicrucians never fail!”
“But now, as I slowly moved along, I felt my human nature was at war with the God-nature within, and that Heart for a while was holding the Head in duress. I longed for release from Solitude; my humanity yearned for association, and would have there, on the breast of the great Eterne; given worlds for the company of the lowliest soul I had ever beheld—and despised, as I walked the streets of the cities of the far-off earth. I yearned for human society and—affection, and could even have found blissful solace with—a dog just such a dog as in times past, I had scornfully kicked in Cairo and Stambol— Even a dog was denied me now— all affection withheld from me—and in the terrible presence of its absence I longed for death, forgetting again that Soul can never die. I longed for that deeper extinguishment which should sweep the soul from being, and crown it with limitless eternal Night forgetful, again, that the Memories of Soul must live, though the rememberer cease to be, and that hence Horrors would echo through the universe—children mourning for their suicidal parent, and that parent myself!…
“It was dreadful, very dreadful, to be all alone. True, the pangs of hunger, the tortures of thirst, the fires of ambition, and the raging flames of earthly passion no longer marred my peace. Pain, such as mortals feel, was unknown; no disease racked my frame, or disturbed the serenity of my external being—for I was immortal, and could laugh all these and Death itself to scorn; and yet a keener anguish, a more fearful suffering, was mine. I wept, and my cries back no outer sound, but they rang in sombre echoes through the mighty arches, the bottomless caverns, the abyssmal deeps of Soul—my soul—racking it with torments such as only thinking things can feel. Such is the lot, such the discipline of the destined citizens of the Farther Empyrean—a region known only to the Brethren of the Temple of Peerless Rosicrucia. [More information about the Uncle Sam is available from the Maritime History Project.]