The fact was, the Fortunate Islands were not one-half so wonderful as
had been represented; and the saints knew it well enough. Had Jason
invested there, as he purposed doing at the time of his embarkment,
he might have sunk all that he possessed--which was little enough
to float, as one would think--and then Maud might have tended her
rose-garden and carried fruit-offerings to the sweet-faced nuns
till she was gray and limping, for all Jason's fine notions of
independence--namely, a good income from the rise of stocks in the
Fortunate Islands, and two souls and two hearts doing the same sort of
thing at the same time, with complete and unqualified success, in that
sweet rose-garden on the sunny slope to the southward.

That was the way life went with Captain Jason of the Argonauts, called
John, for short, in Dreamland, while the crew growled a good deal at
their ill-luck, and began to fear that if things went on in that way
much longer they would have more fasts than Fridays in the week. Those
were trying times for all of them, and when land was made at last, and
it proved to be a temptation and a snare, Jason ordered a special fast
and a mass for the salvation of the souls in imminent peril. Out in
the world at last, thousands of miles from the unsophisticated
people of Dreamland, Jason beheld the dread Symplegades rocking their
enormous bulks upon the waves, and liable at any moment to swing
together with a terrific and deadly crash. Probably they were whales
at play: it may have been two currents of the sea rushing into
each other's arms: at all events, it was something deluding, though
temporary, and perhaps the selfsame difficulty experienced by the
original J. when he went after the original fleece.

My hero was young and unschooled in the world's wickedness, but he
knew that where two opposing elements come together with much force,