Pacific coral islands and volcanoes, cocoa-nut
groves and bananas, graceful savages with paint and feathers--what an El
Dorado! How I devoured them and dreamt of them, and went there in fancy,
and preached small sermons as I lay in my bed at night to Tahitians and New
Zealanders, though I confess my spiritual eyes were, just as my physical
eyes would have been, far more busy with the scenery than with the souls
of my audience. However, that was the place for me, I saw clearly. And one
day, I recollect it well, in the little dingy, foul, reeking, twelve foot
square back-yard, where huge smoky party-walls shut out every breath of air
and almost all the light of heaven, I had climbed up between the water-butt
and the angle of the wall for the purpose of fishing out of the dirty fluid
which lay there, crusted with soot and alive with insects, to be renewed
only three times in the seven days, some of the great larvae and kicking
monsters which made up a large item in my list of wonders: all of a sudden
the horror of the place came over me; those grim prison-walls above, with
their canopy of lurid smoke; the dreary, sloppy, broken pavement; the
horrible stench of the stagnant cesspools; the utter want of form, colour,
life, in the whole place, crushed me down, without my being able to analyse
my feelings as I can now; and then came over me that dream of Pacific
Islands, and the free, open sea; and I slid down from my perch, and
bursting into tears threw myself upon my knees in the court, and prayed
aloud to God to let me be a missionary.
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