Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1896 — His View. [ARTICLE]

His View.

The necessity, or the apparent necessity, of making a living may easily induce a strange habit of thought. If we find it difficult to get bread, we naturally look askance at whatever stands In our way. Edward Hoare tells in his “Autobiography,” of going down to Ramsgate, where he became greatly Interested In the English boatmen, two hundred of whom were entirely dependent on the chance of helping ships in distress off the Goodwin Sands. So poor were they,That it had become with some of them a habit of life to think more of their earnings than of the human beings they saved. One bitterly cold morning, Mr. Hoare met an Old boatman of his acquaintance, and said to him, after passing the greetings of the day: “And how are you getting on?” “Ah,” said the man,“now that they’ve got their lights and buoys and chain cables, there’s nothing left for an honest man to do.” “What do you mean?” “Well, here’s a case. There We were at the south end of. the sands about three o’clock this morning, when up came one of those foreign chaps, and was running as pretty upon the Goodwin Sands as ever you’d wish to see, when, all of a sudden, he saw one of these here nasty staring buoys. Port helm and off!” No one would guess from his tone of disgust that he had spent the best efforts of his life in trying to save from disaster the vessels for which he seemed to court it