imate with her
would have been greatly abridged. As she was, she soon became, without
question, one of the chief social attractions; easily falling into our
vagabond ways, yet embellishing them with so much grace and elegance
that they became doubly precious to us on account of the new charm
imparted to them. All the things any of us could do, Mrs. Sancy could do
better; and one thing she could do that none of the rest of us could,
which was to swim out and float herself in on a surf-board, like a
native island woman; and seeing Mrs. Sancy do this became one of the
daily sensations of Clatsop Beach.

I had known Mrs. Sancy about one week, and came to like her extremely,
not only for her brilliant, social qualities, but on account of her
native originality of thought, and somewhat peculiar culture. I say
peculiar, because her thinking and reading seemed to be in the byways
rather than the highways of ordinary culture. If she made a figure of
speech, it was something noticeably original; if she quoted an author,
it was one unfamiliar though forcible. And so she constantly supplied my
mind with novelties which I craved, and became like a new education to
me. One forenoon, a misty one, we were out on the beach alone, wrapped
up in water-proofs, pacing up and down the sands, and watching the grey
sullen sea, or admiring the way in which the masses of fog roll in among
the tops of the giant firs on Tilamook Head, and were torn into
fragments, and tangled among them.

"You never saw the like of this in the islands?" I said, meaning the
foggy sea, and the dark, fir-clad mountains.

"I have seen _this_ before;" she answered, waving her hand to indicate
the scene as we then beheld it. "You look surprised, but I am familiar
with every foot of this ground. I have lived years in this
neighborhood--right over there, in fact, under the Head. This spot has,
in truth, a strong fascination for me, and it was to see it once more
that I made the voyage."

"You lived in this place, and liked it years ago! How strange! It is but
a wilderness still, though a pleasant one, I admit."

She gave me a playfully superior smile: "We are apt to think ourselves
the discoverers of every country where we chance to be set down; and so
Adam thought he was the first man on the earth, though his sons went out
and found cities where they learned the arts of civilization. So birth,
and love, and death, never cease to be miracles to us, notwithstanding
t