The Seaside Travelers

SOME TRAVELERS, journeying along the seashore, climbed to the summit of
a tall cliff, and looking over the sea, saw in the distance what they
thought was a large ship. They waited in the hope of seeing it enter
the harbor, but as the object on which they looked was driven nearer to
shore by the wind, they found that it could at the most be a small
boat, and not a ship. When however it reached the beach, they
discovered that it was only a large faggot of sticks, and one of them
said to his companions, “We have waited for no purpose, for after all
there is nothing to see but a load of wood.”

Our mere anticipations of life outrun its realities.