A Classic Read

 

I just read a classic, again. First time in years! Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The mastery of the English language is not something you often see in written form anymore. I must say it was a harder read, as in I had to take my time with this book. Even though I can speed read, this was not the kind of novel you could or wanted to exercise that skill. In doing so, you would miss the richness of the language.

Our Book Club picked The Scarlet Letter this month because consensually we agreed reading a classic once a year should be a must.  It was even better this time around! What I got out of the book was so different than previous as I have matured since college days, as most of us have. (Or was it high school I read it; it escapes me, just like many things at this age!).

I urge all of you that follow my blog to take the time to pick a classic book and read it.  Then suggest it to someone else. Understand what makes masterful writing!

Sail Away

With COVID19 in our world right now and many dying, it seems appropriate to revisit this beautiful piece I had gotten from a friend by Henry Van Dyke.

          I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

           Then someone at my side says, “There, she is gone!”

           “Gone where?”

           Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.

          Her diminished size is in me, not in her.  And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There, she is gone!” There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”

And that is dying.

                                                                                          Henry Van Dyke