voyages across
the cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the voice of
ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation as to build ships of
five hundred tons and launch them forth upon the main, bound to "Far
Cathay." Yet how would the merchant sneer at me!

And, after all, can such philosophy be true? Methinks I could find a
thousand arguments against it. Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock
mid-deep in the surf--see! he is somewhat wrathful: he rages and roars
and foams,--let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let me exercise
my oratory like him of Athens who bandied words with an angry sea and
got the victory. My maiden-speech is a triumphant one, for the
gentleman in seaweed has nothing to offer in reply save an immitigable
roaring. His voice, indeed, will be heard a long while after mine is
hushed. Once more I shout and the cliffs reverberate the sound. Oh
what joy for a shy man to feel himself so solitary that he may lift
his voice to its highest pitch without hazard of a listener!--But
hush! Be silent, my good friend! Whence comes that stifled laughter?
It was musical, but how should there be such music in my solitude?
Looking upward, I catch a glimpse of three faces peeping from the
summit of the cliff like angels between me and their native sky.--Ah,
fair girls! you may make yourself merry at my eloquence, but it was my
turn to smile when I saw your white feet in the pool. Let us keep each
other's secrets.

The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, except a gleam upon the
sand just where it meets the sea. A crowd of gloomy fantasies will
come and haunt me if I tarry longer here in the darkening twilight of
these gray rocks. This is a dismal place in some moods of the mind.
Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the brink
gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have been
what few can be--sufficient to our own pastime. Yes, say the word
outright: self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks the
recess now, and dreary too, like all other spots where happiness has
been! There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine with its head
upon the sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! a hit! I clap my
hands in triumph, and see my shadow clapping its unreal hands and
claiming the triumph for itself. What a simpleton must I have been all
day, since my own shadow makes a mock of my fooleries!

Homeward! homeward! It is time to hasten home. It is time--i