my experience with this rough fellow than you will ever get out of your
sunsets. Lucraft's Row is a dull place enough, but when a ray of light
does shine into it, it brings with it more than common joy.

'My objection to your new mode of life is that it is entirely
self-centred. There is no projection of yourself into other lives.
You are contributing nothing to the common stock of moral effort. You
are simply marooned. It alters nothing that you have marooned yourself
under conditions that please and content you. I think that if I were
marooned upon the fairest island of the Southern Seas, where I had but
to bask in the sunshine and stretch out my hand to find delightful
food, there would be still something in my lot which I should find
intolerable. I should spend my days upon the island's loftiest crag,
watching for a sail. The thought of a thousand ships not far away,
rushing round the globe, with throb of piston, crack of cordage, strain
of timber, buffeting of waves, and shouting crews, would drive me
distracted. What to me were blue skies and soft winds when I might be
sharer in this elemental strife? How should I covet, in all this
adorable and detested beauty of my solitary isle, the grey skies that
looked on human effort, the violent wind, the roaring waves, the
muscles cracking at the capstan, the strong exhilaration of peril,
effort, conflict, and the glory of hourly contiguity with death! It
was so Ulysses felt:


How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use.


It was so he resolved