afe, unmysterious hour, and as we neared the place
next day my hopes mounted high, for there was a leaden sky overhead and
loathsome blotches and streaks of oil on the gray water around us--while
ahead on the Jersey shore, from two chimneys that rose halfway to the
clouds, poured two foul, sluggish columns of smoke.

"Still New York harbor, I believe?" I inquired maliciously. But Eleanore
was smiling. "What's the joke?" I demanded.

"The southwest wind," she softly replied. I could feel it coming as she
spoke. As I watched I saw it take that sky and tear jagged rifts in it
for the sun, and then as those two columns of smoke began twisting and
writhing like monster snakes they took on purple and greenish hues and
threw ghostly reflections of themselves down on the oily water around
us, filled with blue and gold shimmerings now.

"What a strange, wonderful purple," murmured a quiet voice by my side.

Stubbornly I resisted conversion. I wanted more afternoons in that boat.

"Now it's blowing that oily odor our way," I declared in sudden
annoyance. "I no sooner get to enjoying myself when along comes one of
the smells of this place. And where's the beauty in _them_? Can you show
me? Here's a place that should be a great storehouse of pure fresh air
for the city to breathe, and----"

"Oh, hush up!" said Eleanore.

But I doggedly found other blemishes here--swamps, railroad yards and
sooty tracks that filled the waterfront for miles where there should
have been parks and boulevards. At the same time I assumed the tone of
one who tries to be fair and patient. Whenever she showed me some new
beauty in water or sky I took great pains to look at it well. When an
angry little squall of wind came ruffling over the sunny waves in
sweeping bands of deep, soft blues, I gazed and gazed at its wonder as
though I could never have enough. And so gazing I spied floating there a
sodden old mattress, a fleet of tin cans. And I said that it seemed an
unhealthy thing to dump all our refuse so close to the city.

"They don't!" she retorted indignantly. "They take it out miles beyond
the Hook!"

In short, I considered myself mighty clever. Day by day I prolonged my
conversion, holding obstinately back--while Eleanore revealed to me the
miracles worked by the sunset here, and by the clouds, the winds, the
tides, the very smoke and the ships themselves, all playing weird
tricks on each other. Slowly the crude glory of it stole upon me
un